


Three Against the Shadows

by ekwallace



Category: Original Work
Genre: Canon Threesome, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Magic, Monsters, Multi, half-demon character, immortals who are bad at feelings, pre-industrial world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:35:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 60,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25423981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ekwallace/pseuds/ekwallace
Summary: Saskia Pyotir, half-demon and unwilling royal assassin, is on a mission to discover why her fully demon cousins are going mad and attacking humans. She tracks one of them across the world, only to discover that she's not the only one hunting them.Her cousins haven't simply gone mad. They've been claimed by shadow motes, malicious spirits drawn to wounds between the worlds. Only one person can exorcise the motes: the man known as the northern hunter. But the shadow motes are growing stronger and spreading farther, threatening to upset the balance of the human world and cast it into darkness. Now Saskia, her human guide Yumino, and the northern hunter must discover what is happening, and how to stop it, before it's too late.
Kudos: 1





	1. Chapter 1

Saskia was alone when the summons to the palace came. She did not know where her father was, and told herself she didn’t care. Only a few days ago, she’d learned he’d lied to her all her sixteen years about who she was, _what_ she was...

She had resolved not to think about that.

She quickly changed her homespun for her only best dress, blue silk she had almost outgrown this year, and remembered to tuck her hair away beneath a scarf as befit a young unmarried woman.

She had never ridden in a carriage before, and kept her silence on the way to the imperial city. A part of her dared not speak without being spoken to first by the man of the imperatrix’s guard who had fetched her, but a much greater part of her was marshaling her strength and wits, for she would surely need both.

She and her cousin Jashree had explored the city when it was being built, though not as much as Saskia wished to. How different it was now! The wide, even streets, the folk in beautiful clothes, and all of it so clean, nestled in glittering snowbanks. Saskia pulled her feet back to hide her muddy boots beneath her skirts.

The approach to the palace she would always love, this first time and every time after, especially in the winter like this, the buildings all the same but for their bright colors, sky blue and crimson and vivid green against the backdrop of the snow, and the wide square at the city’s center, so that the streets seemed to open up to show the golden palace a jewel held at Pyotiria’s heart.

 _Why do they take me by such roundabout ways?_ she thought as she followed the guard through the labyrinth of the palace. Surely the throne room would be near to the entrance, but the guard led Saskia through room after room, some so full of gilded mirrors and portraits that she could scarce see the color of the walls, some with the relics of war in glass cabinets, and everywhere the furnishings richer than any she had ever seen.

And then they were passing through tall doors of real gold that could only mean the throne room at last, and Saskia was shocked to see that the woman upon the throne, head held high, was much of an age with herself.

The guard bowed to the imperatrix, then stepped away, leaving Saskia alone on the sea of shining parquet.

She curtseyed. She was only a farm girl, whatever else she was, but she knew to do that much. She felt no fear - not then, not yet - only curiosity. The imperatrix seemed beautiful at first glance, but beneath the face-paint and wig, she was not. There was a cold strength in her small, rather close-set eyes, though, which Saskia called upon her own strength to meet.

“Saskia, the farmer’s daughter.”

She nodded.

“But that is not all you are.”

 _So that is why I am here. There’s one mystery solved, at least._ “No, your highness.”

“We are aware of the beings of darkness and light within our kingdom,” the imperatrix said, conversationally, as if one did not stand before her. “Most are harmless. Those that are not are dealt with.”

 _I would not have been brought all this way if she had already decided I was the latter_ , Saskia told herself. “I understand. How may I serve you?”

“By serving Kallekot, of course.”

Saskia knew the right answer to _that_ ; it came instinctively to her lips. “I should like nothing more.”

It was no lie - she wished she knew a way to make certain the imperatrix understood this was no dutiful mouthing of empty sentiment. “Please, tell me how.”

“There is a matter to deal with in Threvolk.” The imperatrix did no more than look at one of her guards, and he immediately opened a small door to let someone into the room.

“Papa!” Bitterness forgotten, Saskia made as if to go to him, but drew back when the guard took hold of her father’s arm. For the first time since leaving the farm, she felt fear like cold fingers closing about her neck. “Are you all right?”

He looked not to her, but to the imperatrix, before nodding. “I am, sweet girl. I’m to be their guest for a little while, they say. I am sorr--” 

The imperatrix cut him off with a gesture. “He shall remain here until you return.”

So that was the leash by which they meant to hold her. Saskia squared her shoulders. “What must I do?”

Threvolk had once been Kallekot’s, and was now held by Essalian troops. The accident Saskia ensured befell the Essalian governor there opened the way for the folk to drive out the occupying forces - with some well-timed help from Kallekot’s army.

The province was rightfully the imperatrix’s, the people there Saskia’s countryfolk. Her part in freeing them had to be secret, but she took pride in what she had done.

As the years stretched on and Saskia grew in skill - gained, too, a reputation whispered of in the taverns of Kallekot and cursed in the seats of power in other lands - she grew gladder of the secrecy, for she wished to keep hidden more and more of her deeds. But by then, the imperatrix held her father in Pyotiria with no pretense of his being a guest, and Saskia had no choice. So she worked the imperial will, and dreamed of the day when she and her father would once again be free.

***

_Fifty years later_

Saskia flings her arm in front of her face, barely in time to block the slash of her cousin’s claws.

Far from home, exhausted and outmatched, she grits her teeth. She is the better with a blade, but her skill is worth little when she fights one whose reach so far exceeds her own.

“Altia, I don’t want to hurt you.”

Her cousin has the advantage there, too, she thinks bitterly, for in her madness, Altia clearly does not care if she hurts Saskia.

“What is the matter?” It is not the first time she has asked, and she gets no more sense in answer this time than she has before.

“Cast out,” her cousins spits. “Because of your humans!”

“That’s not true!”

It is _not_ \--the imperatrix set Saskia to hunt down her cousins only when they began to kill humans in Pyotiria. She has tracked them westward for months, but they have run from her until now. Altia abruptly wheeled about in this glade as Saskia pursued, and went on the attack. 

Color dapples the forest floor, a dance of shifting greens as the wind plays in the branches above--it would be peaceful here, some other time. 

But now the air has an unnatural chill, and the shadows in the undergrowth have sharp edges, and seem poised to strike out, and the small spirits ever present in forests like this have gone, or have hidden themselves.

“We can live peacefully with the humans, just as we have always done,” Saskia says, trying reason.

Her cousin gives her a look of such contempt that she recoils. It is not only the scorn that stings; there is a terrible wisdom in her eyes that seems at once to mock and to pity.

There is something else in her eyes, too. Darkness wells up, as if she would weep black tears.

Saskia takes another step back, gripping her dagger more tightly. She has never seen anything like _that_. The shadows of the trees writhe; the chill turns yet more biting in air that should still hold summer’s warmth.

All pretense of civility gone, Altia screams toward her, fire in her hands.

Saskia drops into a crouch and with a sweeping kick knocks her cousin off her feet, and, continuing the same turn, brings her dagger scraping along the ground to fling soil into her face.

Altia is mad beyond help, and the darkness Saskia saw in her eyes bodes even more ill, though she doesn’t know exactly what it might portend. She should end this now. She _could_ end it; she shifts her grip on her dagger, readying for a strike from below. It is not as if she has never killed before.

She turns and runs while her cousin still claws the dirt from her eyes.

***

Saskia has never seen the ocean until now, has never been on a ship, and despite the urgency of her mission and her failure several days ago (the cuts she earned fighting Altia still throb), a stillness falls on her when she finds herself alone on a part of the deck.

She has been watched all her life. No one is watching her _now_ , not the imperatrix or her troops or spies, and not curious or frightened humans. Saskia closes her eyes and breathes in the salty air, feels on her face the little flecks of spray thrown by the bow. She is travelling as quickly as she might and can do no more in her mission, so for now, she need not strive or fret. She smiles.

The ship’s guardian spirits peek out at her here and there. Strange that cat spirits should venture on the ocean, but in Essalia, they _do_ keep cats aboard ships.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she tells them, but, not surprisingly, they keep their distance.

So do most of the humans, sensing perhaps the difference they cannot see just by looking at her. She doesn’t mind that.

She can fathom no reason for her cousins’ madness. She could not even get close enough to speak to the first she found, who threw herself from a cliff and beyond her reach. Altia did not pursue her. Two others are out there still, one lost in the fog in the mountains that divide Kallekot and Essalia, the one Saskia sighted yesterday fleeing even now across the water to the edge of the world.

She wakes in the night with the screams of the falling and the dead ringing in her ears.

She knows almost nothing of Tiandar, that small and strange country she would have needed to bribe her way into not long ago, for it is only in the last decades that its borders have been opened.

She did know she would need a guide, but the young woman she engaged when she landed near Merebah has decided she needs a chaperone as well, and Saskia can hardly explain that she is three times as old as she looks, nor that she has been used to travelling alone. Though Yumino is charming, Saskia has been at some pains to slip away from her well-meaning shadow so she can find the answers she needs.

This is a country of spirits, even more than her own. Saskia has grown almost used to them lingering at the edges of her vision like the marginalia in a manuscript, as varied and silly and grotesque, here a bird with the face of a monkey, there a tiny dragon with scales like jewels. They are not so many in the market where she finds herself, and she sees none at all beyond the square, by the river. That is strange enough that she begins to pick her way through the maze of stalls and carts to have a closer look.

Her city’s buildings are bright, but shrouded in snow much of the year. Tiandar is color-drenched and warm all the time, it seems, even more so now in the last of summer’s blaze. Silks flutter in pink and orange and cobalt, a sitar plays somewhere, with soft chiming bells keeping time, and in just a few moments, she counts a half-dozen kinds of fruit she has never seen before.

“Miss Saskia, there you are! You should not wander off so.”

It took her two days to convince Yumino not to call her “Lady,” and that only by hinting she was on a mission of some discretion. Which is not entirely false, but for different reasons than anyone would suspect. She has had no such luck getting her to leave off “Miss.”

She affects a wilted look. “It is only that it is so hot. I was looking for shade.”

“You would be cooler, Miss Saskia, if you wore a Tiandarese dress instead of that great heavy Kallekotian thing.”

She is not wrong. Saskia is almost never bothered by heat, creature of flame as she is, but even she must constantly blot sweat from her temples and upper lip in Tiandar’s sultry late afternoons.

“Would that be proper?”

“Of course. Our silks are the best in the world.”

Saskia smiles at this display of pride. “Then, by all means, I should like some of my own.”

Saskia suspects Yumino finds their obvious differences as fascinating as she does. Yumino’s hair is perfectly straight and looks like heavy black silk, while Saskia’s is fine and coppery and goes flyaway in the humidity of Tiandar; Yumino has curves graceful and generous enough that Saskia cannot decide if she is wildly envious or simply happy to admire her, for she herself is slightly built and some inches shorter. But what intrigues her most are the silk flowers Yumino decorates her hair and dresses with, all as intricate and bright as her clothes and their many layers. Other women here wear them as well, but they are usually smaller and more subdued. By some art, Yumino’s always smell of jasmine.

“You may wear brighter colors when you are unmarried,” Yumino says when Saskia asks about them. “And, of course, the women of the highest castes gild theirs instead of using many different-colored fabrics.”

Yumino is clearly not one of those women, but she _is_ pretty enough to be a court maiden, the picture of Tiandarese beauty with her big dark eyes, brown skin, and mouth that curves up at the corners, making her seem to smile even in the rare moments when she does not. Yet the people here treat her with a certain chilliness. Saskia does not understand it, and does not know enough of this land to begin to ask without offending her. Tiandarese society is a complex web of castes and rules, most unspoken. Yumino has tried to explain some things, but much of it remains a mystery.

The way the seamstress at the dress shop they visit speaks to Yumino is not a mystery, even to one who does not speak Tiandarese, and Saskia does not like it. She tosses her head, and though she is shorter than the seamstress, she knows how to look down at her all the same.

“Tell her I am in Tiandar at the behest of the imperatrix of Kallekot herself. You may imply as strongly as you like that discourtesy to my servant is discourtesy to me, and to her highness.” She sees that Yumino understands why she used ‘servant,’ and that she is clever enough not to give the two of them away by smiling.

The seamstress is much more polite after Yumino translates that, and she must say something to her assistant, for she is scrupulously deferential to Saskia and seems to treat Yumino at least as an equal. They order a dress of watered silk in blue and green, not so bright as Yumino’s, for that is not to Saskia’s taste. Yumino insists on the green, saying it will bring out the color of Saskia’s eyes. “Then you’ll be even prettier.”

“Do the folk speak of anything strange happening lately?” Saskia asks, once they have found shade in the garden back at the inn and are taking some of the cool melon drink favored in Tiandar.

“You need not worry about such things.”

She tries to hide her exasperation. “I’m curious. We have many tales of ghosts and goblins in Kallekot. Are those of Tiandar much alike?”

Yumino considers, and seems to decide Saskia is not too delicate for this topic after all. “There is a village in the west they say has been overrun by shadow motes.”

Saskia nods; this does not interest her. 

“And they say the river Tian burns at night here. _That_ is a thing I had not heard before.”

It is also a thing that sounds much more like her cousin’s doing than a village taken by shadow. “What, every night?”

Yumino shrugs. “They say an unquiet spirit is angry, for the harvest was poor.”

“What does a spirit, who cannot eat, care about the harvest?”

“There was little left for tribute.”

“That seems a petty grudge on the spirit’s part.”

“Miss Saskia, you mustn’t joke about such things.”

Saskia casts a considering look over the river, visible from here as glints of silver among the trees that line its banks. It will be easier to search at night, without humans about. “I’m not afraid of spirits.”

***

Saskia slips out once it is full dark and Yumino sleeps in the bed beside her own. The night air is cool and carries the scent of flowers. As Yumino said, fire flickers along the water, and Saskia finds her cousin easily by its light. Except for the trickle of the river, it is quiet. Even the drone of the night-time insects, so constant here that Saskia has almost ceased to hear it, has stopped.

She cannot understand why her cousin has behaved as she has, fleeing with no sense or strategy in as nearly a straight line west as she could, nor why she has stopped here and made no attempt to hide herself. 

She does not know her cousin’s name, but calls to her using their kind’s name for themselves. “Daughter of the moon, what troubles you?”

Her cousin turns toward the sound of her voice, but does not seem to understand. There is an emptiness in her eyes that makes Saskia want to retreat instead of going closer to the footbridge separating them as she knows she must.

“Why have you run so far from Pyotiria?” She feels the distance from the city keenly herself, but the name of their home sparks no recognition in her cousin’s face. “What has happened to you?” She holds out her hand in the hope her cousin can still comprehend that.

Her cousin snarls, and for a moment, her face, distorted by rage, looks like Saskia’s mother’s; her hands, raised in threat or self-protection, like her mother’s lifted clawlike to ward Saskia off. She shakes herself and the illusion fades.

Could such a thing happen to her? Could she lose herself so much that she would not even know her own kind?

With a gesture, her cousin calls the fire on the river to flare higher.

“No,” Saskia says. “Your quarrel is not with the villagers here.”

But is it? She doesn’t know what grudge her cousin might hold, nor against whom she might hold it. Altia railed against humans, but Saskia knows nothing of this one. She has to take a step back as the heat grows too intense even for her.

“It doesn’t have to be like this. Hear my voice, and leave off this madness.”

She thinks she sees awareness finally spark in her cousin’s eyes, and she starts to step toward the footbridge, but not onto it, for that would cut off all avenues of escape but the one.

A sword blocks her path.

How she failed to hear someone approach, she doesn’t know. Nothing--human or beast--has crept up on her in decades.

She has her dagger out and pointed at the dark-haired young man as soon as she recovers, far more swiftly than a human could have done it, but he does not look the slightest bit concerned.

They stare at each other. 

“Very well,” Saskia says, making her tone placating because she doesn’t expect him to speak her language. “I shall put this away if you put that--” She nods at the sword. “--away. Yes?”

He lowers the sword, and she tucks her dagger back into her belt.

“You have no business here,” he says in Kallekotian, surprising her. His voice is deeper than she might have guessed--for he is not so tall as he seemed at first glance, perhaps only a head taller than Saskia, who is not tall by any measure--and his pronunciation is scrupulously exact, but archaic. He has a tinge of an accent she has never heard before.

She gestures toward her cousin, who watches them warily, but makes no further move to threaten them. “She is my business.”

“Not anymore.” 

She knows who he is, now she’s heard him speak and gotten a better look at his garb, an old-fashioned padded tunic of some sort of dark-blue brocade. He’s not a young man at all.

People say the northern hunter came down from the mountains at the top of the world, old when creation was still new; they say he is one of only a few left, or the only one, or that he is a myth and none still live at all. They say none of his people, men or women, cut their hair until they are defeated in battle, and Saskia sees that the stranger’s hair is in a braid that reaches his waist. To her eye, he has something of the look of each of the peoples of their world: Kallekot in the sharpness, almost delicacy, of his features, Tiandar in his dark hair and arrow-straight brows, Bakthio in the olive cast of his skin.

“Oh, yes, she is! She can be brought back.”

“She cannot.” Saskia has never seen colder eyes--the grey of the sky in the deepest part of Kallekot’s winter.

“You don’t know that.”

“Of all those who walk this world,” he says, “perhaps I alone truly know. She's been infected by--” He says a word she doesn't recognize, which carries sharp edges and the crack of thin ice. "Shadow motes, in your language."

Those words are as chilling as the unfamiliar one. No one knows much of shadow motes, but everyone knows to fear them.

"Can you not let her go? I don’t think she will harm humans unless she must."

If the hunter finds her phrasing strange, he gives no sign. "And leave her free to spread the shadow? I cannot."

"You mean you _will_ not."

His eyes are granite. "I will not, then. You needn't watch."

Saskia squares her shoulders. "I can't save her. The least I can do is witness her end."

For a moment, the stony set of his expression softens--but no, she must have imagined it, for there is only determination on his face now.

Her cousin must be able to read it, too, for when the hunter steps onto the footbridge, she gives a cry like a bird of prey’s, thin and wild. The flames surge until they tower, blotting out the stars.

Saskia hastens to back out of the way, and they aren’t the only ones on the riverbank now--folk have come from their houses to see what the light and the noise are.

The hunter lifts his sword. When the moon strikes the edge of the blade, it throws a lance of light so brilliant that Saskia must look away, eyes watering.

Her cousin... unfolds, into inky darkness that swallows all the light around her, and now Saskia knows the motes have taken her, for, dark as it is, there is motion in the blackness, many small things teeming and roiling.

She has heard that the northern hunter is graceful and deadly, and he is most assuredly both. She has _not_ heard that he is beautiful, and he is absolutely that, too. The fight seems almost a dance, his sword bright curves that slice at the corrupted darkness, his braid flying in arcs that echo the motion. The flames subside as quickly as they sprang up, and Saskia knows her cousin must have reached the end of her strength after her long flight from the far side of the world, but, true to her word, she watches until the hunter sweeps away the last clot of unnatural shadow.

“Miss Saskia!” Yumino runs up beside her. “I might have known I would find you here, where the commotion is.”

She looks so worried that a pang of guilt at having sneaked out stings Saskia. “I am sorry for keeping things from you. I will explain when we are safe.”

The hunter calls something to the villagers in the language of Tiandar, and they scramble to deal with the small fires still burning by the river. Then he comes over to Saskia and Yumino. His sword hand is bloody, but he doesn’t seem to have noticed.

"Saskia Pyotir, the sword of the imperatrix." His voice is completely neutral, holding neither condemnation nor admiration.

"How do you know that name?" _Hearsay is all I know of him. How can it be that he knows me?_

“There are creatures taken by darkness that must be hunted in every country,” he says, and she lifts her chin and tries to ignore the thread of fear like a trickle of cold water down her back, for surely there is no way he could know, is there? “There was nothing you could have done for her.” 

He turns to go, but she thinks of her other cousins, still out there somewhere. They deserve better than the deaths he will deal them. “Wait.”

He looks back. His face gives nothing away.

“Two more there are like her. You will come upon them before long, will you not?”

He considers. “I cannot say when I will be called, but if they have been taken by the shadow motes, I surely will.” 

This is more or less as she expected. “If you will let me try to talk to them, I will help you find them.” Now she understands the darkness swirling in Altia’s eyes. “I am certain the shadow motes are the cause of their madness.”

He looks at her for a long moment, and she stares back, meeting the challenge. “Very well. Be ready at first light.”

***

“I am only half human,” Saskia tells Yumino when they are back at the inn. She sits by the window in the wisps of breeze from outside. “I didn’t know until I was sixteen years old that my mother is, or was, what they call a fire witch.” 

“I knew you were special!”

Saskia gives an exasperated noise that she nevertheless cannot keep the amusement out of. “You keep scolding me!”

“Seeing that you behave properly is part of my job.”

Saskia laughs to see her prim expression. “I did _not_ engage you for that.”

“No, but, Miss Saskia, it does make things much easier.” 

“Let us make a bargain between the two of us: you may say what you think without first saying what you ought, and I shall not be offended.”

Yumino stares for a moment before grinning. “Well... don’t let me make it a habit.”

Saskia grins back. “Agreed.”

Now she knows Yumino is neither frightened nor disbelieving, it is easier to tell her the rest. “Many of my cousins--my mother’s kin, and mine, but full demons like her--have long lived in the wild lands near Pyotiria. The imperatrix knows of them, but does not trouble them as long as they do not trouble humans.

“And they have _not_ troubled humans, not until lately. My cousins have been going mad. They began to come into the city, when they never had before. They used their magic to cause mischief, then to attack humans. Then to kill them. The imperatrix charged me with finding out what ails them.

“But they would not talk to me. Some of them, I think, could not. The mad ones scattered before me, and I followed one of them all the way here. Now I must find the others so I can make report back to the imperatrix.”

“Why must you do as she says?”

Saskia looks away.

“Miss Saskia? It doesn’t seem like you.”

“The imperatrix may do as she likes with any of her subjects.” There are still villagers in the square below the window; she can hear sounds of merriment, but they seem far away. “Including me. And including my father.”

“Your father?”

“Yes, he still lives. I am a farmer’s daughter, and he is the only one who has ever been a parent to me.”

“I don’t even know who my father is,” Yumino says quietly. “But I learned a truth about my mother when I was sixteen, too. She was really the woman I had thought was my older sister. She bore me even younger than I was when I learned the story. My father was from a much higher caste, but that’s all I know of him.”

So that is why the others here treat Yumino so strangely--it’s so _unfair_. “My dear, that’s terrible.”

Yumino waves a hand. “It’s not so bad. I’m free to do as I wish, for the most part, for no-one expects a bastard child to amount to much.”

“You must come back to Kallekot with me when all this is done. I will not have you treated badly here, or anywhere.”

“Is that an order?”

“ _Yes_.” They both laugh.

“You’re very used to having your own way, Saskia.”

“I suppose I am. No-one expects a half-demon to amount to much, either.”

They go to their beds then, Saskia acutely aware it will be hours only before they must be on their way.

But neither of them can sleep much--Saskia is used to more luxurious furnishings than these, which in typical Tiandarese fashion are elegant but not comfortable. When she realizes they both lie awake once more, she asks a thing she has been wondering. “What do you think of him, the northern hunter?”

“I--“ Yumino hesitates, and Saskia cannot yet see her face in the pre-dawn dimness.

“Don’t forget our agreement so soon.”

“He frightens me. I know he kills the shadow motes, but what is he, that he can do that?” The bedclothes rustle as she sits up. “Doesn’t he frighten you?”

 _There are creatures taken by darkness that must be hunted in every country_ , he said, and Saskia still does not know if he would think of her as one of them, did he know her true nature. “I would be a fool if he did not. But if I am to have any hope of helping my cousins, I must go with him. _Oh_ \--” she says, realizing. “I have volunteered you to go, as well, without asking what you think at all.”

“That’s true. But I would have said yes... eventually.” Now Saskia can make out Yumino’s expression, less teasing than her tone, but not angry.

“I _am_ sorry for that.”

“Don’t be. If you can be brave enough to go with him, so can I. Who would watch over you if I didn’t?”

“Who would tell me if I spoke too lightly of spirits?”

“That too. And I think he’s honorable.”

“Mm. Let us hope half human is human enough."


	2. Chapter 2

_“We have to be secret friends, Saskia!” Jashree said once, and Saskia nodded immediately._

_The wild lands were their kingdom. They could not know that it would be less than fifty years before those secret streams and those pathways only they knew would be gone, the forests razed and rivers diverted and grasslands shorn to make the great city of Pyotiria._

_Jashree was older than Saskia, and she could do magic. She lived in the mountains, though Saskia had never worked out exactly how she could live up on those slopes too rocky and steep for animals to graze, nor where her parents were, if she even had any._

_Saskia could make sparks leap from her fingertips, but she had only a father, which seemed to matter in a way Jashree having no one did not, and she knew about sheep and goats but nothing of the mountains or the lands beyond Kallekot._

_None of that mattered when they played together in the forests and swamps near where the imperatrix’s city grew day by day. Saskia loved to watch from afar as the wooden frames transformed by their own brand of magic into buildings, beautiful and as many-tiered and brightly colored as cakes. Jashree would rather make castles of the trees she climbed, their top branches her pretended ramparts, and she would venture impossibly high and call down to Saskia, daring her to follow._

_Saskia, much smaller, would climb as high as she could until Jashree came and helped her up._

_“All this land used to be ours,” she said once, looking out over the treetops that rippled like a great green sea._

_“Your family’s?” Saskia asked._

_“_ Ours _,” Jashree repeated, with an emphasis Saskia did not understand then._

_It was decades before she realized Jashree must have been her kin, fully demon where she was half, drawn down from the mountains by curiosity. It’s seldom enough that children are born to daughters of the moon, for most scorn the idea of taking a human lover, though they lure men astray often enough that it is a kernel of truth in stories about them. They were the only children of their kind close in age, and Jashree the only play-mate Saskia knew._

_But Saskia would have loved her best even if she had known many such cousins or play-mates, for Jashree was the bravest person in the world, and when they were together, Saskia felt brave, too, and could forget that the village children feared her._

***

Saskia and Yumino wait in the courtyard of the inn where they are to meet the northern hunter for over an hour before he arrives.

He seems now more human, though of course he is not, and less intimidating, with dark smudges beneath his eyes and the vague blear of sleeplessness hanging about him, so that he seems rumpled without actually having a hair out of place. His left hand is bandaged--he noticed the wound after all.

“First light?” Saskia asks wryly.

He does not _quite_ look sheepish, but he does duck his head, almost imperceptibly. “My apologies. We travel west.”

“I last saw one of my cousins in Essalia.”

“That may be, but I must go west.”

Saskia opens her mouth to argue, but recalls that, annoyingly, she did agree that he could go where he must.

“The motes have taken a village not far from here,” he adds.

“So it _is_ true,” Yumino says.

At Saskia’s questioning look, she goes on. “It’s as I told you yesterday. The people fled, but brought tales of the shadows.”

“Places that have been infected are no less dangerous than people,” the hunter says. “They, too, can fight back.”

He draws some stares as they walk through the town, though not as many as Saskia, with her foreign clothes and pale skin--and not as many as he ought, for he really is quite striking, all angles and sharp lines, except for the curls escaping his braid, and except for the generous curve of his mouth. She wonders if he ever smiles.

“How can a place be infected?”

“And fight back?” Yumino sounds more excited than frightened.

“It’s like a haunting, and the two are often confused. Indeed, a haunted place will often draw the shadow motes to it. A ghost is like...” He thinks for a moment, fine dark brows drawing together. “Like a memory engraved upon a place by pain and grief. By itself, it knows no more than that. But the shadow motes have ever been drawn to such wounds between the worlds, and from there, they can spread.”

Saskia knows little about the motes, and the hunter’s words hint that there is much she doesn’t even realize she does not know. She never saw them before yesterday, not for herself, though there are of course stories of them in every land.

The woods close in around the road as soon as they are out of Merebah, as if the forest has swallowed up the town behind them. The morning is warm, and Saskia is glad she insisted on wearing her own travelling clothes instead of her new gown. Yumino herself has a simpler dress on today, without so many layers, and Saskia shall have to remember to ask her pointedly why _she_ could not have had one such as that.

“As for fighting back,” the hunter says, “I imagine you will see for yourselves, and sooner rather than later. Walk on. I’ll catch up.” He steps from the road and disappears into the woods almost at once.

“Did the people from the village say what happened?” Saskia asks Yumino.

“No. They weren’t eager to speak of it.”

“Mm, I suppose not.” Saskia was glad herself, last night, of not needing to tell Yumino what happened by the river. It is not just that it would have been difficult to describe and more that she doesn’t wish to think on it much--the memories, when she tries to focus on them, slide away from her, like the last remnants of a dream escaping one’s waking mind. It must be thus for others the motes have affected, too, perhaps more so, for they are not part of that world at all, and she at least has one foot in it.

“Where do you think he’s gone?” Yumino says.

“I think we will not get much in the way of explanations from that one, unless it is the motes we speak of.”

“I went to get these.” The hunter is back on the road as abruptly as he left it, and he holds a perfectly ripe peach out to each of them.

Yumino laughs delightedly. Saskia searches those calm grey eyes for mockery, decides she sees none, and smiles her thanks.

The peach is delicious.

***

Humans are no match for Saskia; the hunter, whatever the truth of him is behind the legends, might be. With luck, it will not come to that.

She has been used to travel alone, and in rather more comfort than this--her usual targets do not, to say the least, frequent the wilds of foreign countries. 

She remembers the face of every person she has ever killed. Will he remember her cousin’s?

_Remembering their faces does not absolve you._ The whisper in the back of her mind is as unwelcome as ever, and she banishes it the same way she always does. _I have no choice._

The hunter looks over at them from time to time with no evident curiosity, his beautiful face as impassive as it has been all along. Saskia thinks she might like him better if he were less beautiful and more expressive.

“He _is_ very pretty,” Yumino whispers in such accurate echo of Saskia’s own thought that she smiles.

“Yes,” she whispers back. “But very cold, too.”

“I don’t know...” At Saskia’s skeptical look, she grins. “He _did_ bring us those peaches.”

“Polite is not warm.”

After their meal of steamed buns brought from Merebah, the hunter sorts through the contents of the small pack he carries, with a smooth, practiced ease that suggests he’s done it countless times before, checking, Saskia assumes, that all the tools he uses are in good working order. She sees some she cannot identify and some she can, like herbs. His absorption in his work changes his expression, relaxes him, perhaps, and he looks somewhat less forbidding.

“Is that a moonfire stone?” Yumino says, looking at Saskia’s necklace. “I’ve never seen one before, except in books.”

“It is.” Saskia unclasps it and hands it to her. “I found the stone when I was young, where Pyotiria was being built. Later, I had it cut, and I made this necklace.”

Yumino turns it about, watching the rainbow iridescence kindle in its depths. “It’s special to your kin, isn’t it?” She asks softly enough for the hunter not to overhear, and Saskia is glad of her discretion.

“Yes, much like the moon herself.” Saskia is ambivalent at best about most of the gods, as she suspects they would be about her, did they give her any thought at all, but she feels a special connection to the Moon Maiden. When she comes across a shrine to her, she always stops and does her devotions.

Yumino hands the necklace back, and Saskia puts it back on.

The hunter finishes his task, repacking everything neatly, and looks over at them. “When the time comes to face the shadow motes, you must do as I tell you.”

Saskia bristles. “You’re quick to assume we will be in your way.”

He gives a one-shouldered shrug. “I am used to fighting alone.”

She has no answer for that. “How is it that you recognized me?” she asks him again, for she still cannot tell if he knows what she is. She should, like him, be little more than whispers.

“I know Kallekot well. And Tiandar.” He sketches a bow toward Yumino. “I hear everything, soon or late. In Bakthio, too, and Essalia, and Ywister-- need I go on?”

“Everywhere,” Yumino breathes. “Oh, tell me all about it.”

His mouth quirks. “All about everywhere?”

He might have expected that to make Yumino abashed, but Saskia knows her better by now.

“Fine, you can’t tell me _everything_. Tell me about... Bakthio.”

To his credit, he does. Saskia also knows little of the southern continent, and finds herself caught up in the hunter’s descriptions of lush jungles covering hundreds of acres, such exotic animals as elk and gharials and river-dragons, and the people, mostly nomads who follow the animals as they migrate.

“They believe we are all one,” he says. “Not only humans and spirits and animals, but that the world itself has a soul.”

“Does it?” Yumino says.

“That I do not know. But it would not surprise me.”

***

Saskia isn’t certain what to expect of a place infected by shadow motes, but the abandoned village, as they approach it, merely looks empty at first.

Then she sees the signs of decay--the crumbling stones of a well, houses with doorways and windows standing blank or broken. A tree leaning over the village wall is divided as neatly between living and dead as if two entirely different trees have been joined along a straight line.

An air of corruption rolls out like a fog to greet them.

_Rot and sickness, and it feels like a graveyard--no, like a sickroom in plague times, for it lacks the peace of the quiet dead. Yet humans lived here only days ago._

The northern hunter steps in front of Saskia and Yumino while they are yet outside the village wall and holds up a hand to signal them to stop. He looks about for some moments, scanning the ruins that should not be ruins, and Yumino moves closer to Saskia. 

“This is not your cousin’s doing,” he says. “The two of you should stay here.”

“She could be in there.” Saskia doesn’t think he would _lie_ \--he seems as if he would think it beneath him--but she _is_ certain he had rather go on without her and her inconvenient questions.

“If Saskia’s going, I’m going,” Yumino says. “I want to _see_.”

The hunter makes a small sound of exasperation, neither quite sigh nor growl, but with something of both in it. “Very well.” He puts his hand on the hilt of his sword and beckons for them to follow him into the village.

Saskia takes out her dagger, for if the hunter thinks he should be ready, so should she, but then, recalling Yumino has no weapon, holds it out to her.

“What about you?”

“I’m not helpless.” 

The hunter glances back at them, and they fall silent.

When they step across the boundary of the village, from outside the wall to within, Saskia cannot repress a shiver, for the late-summer air goes instantly as chill as winter. She cannot see anything moving, not yet, but she senses things rustling and gathering just beyond her sight. This place, like the riverbank, is empty of spirits. They must have fled the shadow motes just as the villagers did.

The roof of the temple at the village center has fallen in, though the archway of its massive wooden double doors is still upright. The holy symbols across it have been burned to black smudges by some malicious hand.

“The work of the shadow motes,” the hunter says. “They cannot abide the symbols of faith on any shape they have taken.”

“Is Tinda the only faith they recognize?” Saskia asks.

“No.” He looks at her but past her, as if into a great distance. “They abhor all such signs of hope and belief.”

They move on, the hunter walking more slowly, as if he has caught the scent of something and seeks to pin it down.

“Do you hear voices?” Yumino whispers.

Now that she listens for them, Saskia does, dry and rattling like dead leaves. She cannot make out words, but the very sound prickles the hairs on the back of her neck.

“Games,” the hunter scoffs. “We’ll have to make them show themselves.”

“How?” Saskia says.

“Do you know the herb mugwort?”

“I do,” Yumino says.

“Gather some, please. We can use it to contain the motes. It is best to cut it with silver, but I have none.”

“My dagger’s silver,” Saskia says.

The hunter nods. “Good. Be on your guard--the motes will try to trick or frighten you.”

Yumino stays close as they go--and Saskia would have if she had not, for the whispering of dead things has not stopped, and it is all the worse for being mostly unintelligible; Saskia fancies she hears her name in it at times, or the voices of her cousins, or her mother, accusing or lamenting. What Yumino hears, she does not ask. It is enough to put an unwonted frown on her face.

They find the plant growing among the weeds in what looks to have been a garden years ago. Mushrooms grow there, too, huge and in sickly shades of silvery green. Yumino cuts sprigs of the mugwort, and the breeze grows colder until Saskia is shivering.

“Are you all right?” Yumino asks.

“Yes. The cold bothers me more than it does humans, but it cannot hurt me.”

All at once Yumino grips the dagger hard enough that her knuckles go white. “No!”

Saskia takes the blade from her, gently, and puts her hand on her shoulder. “Whatever they say to you, it’s not true.”

Yumino shakes herself. “Right. Thank you.”

The hunter has taken a strange sort of censer from his pack and scatters something from it--salt, it must be--on the ground in narrowing circles. The air grows heavier as he does, until it seems to press in on them from all sides.

“The leaves of the herb will help cage the motes,” he says, and gestures that they should follow the lines he’s made.

“Should we not burn it?” Yumino asks. “I’ve read about purifying places that way.”

“That is done, but we seek to entrap the motes, not merely drive them away.”

Saskia thinks of other methods she knows for driving out spirits, though who knows if they will work against shadow motes. “Is fire not as effective?”

“I’d rather not use it, except as a last resort.”

Where he scattered the salt, the grass has turned black. Yumino and Saskia fan out, each sprinkling leaves of the herb.

The dry rustles of not-quite-speech have fallen silent, as if the motes gather their strength for whatever is to come next.

Neither Saskia nor Yumino is ready when the ground heaves. 

Saskia regains her feet first, and runs to help Yumino up.

The soil enclosed by the salt and herb churns like boiling water, undulating this way and that, looking for all the world as if it seeks an escape route.

“Finally,” the hunter says. He, Saskia notes, did not lose his footing. “Follow me.”

He pours more salt, this time with an eye on the choppy soil, forcing it into one area, where the earth contracts, turning to the deep and writhing darkness Saskia’s cousin became. She and Yumino hasten to strengthen the line with the mugwort, and together the three of them force the shadow soil into a space near the village wall. A freezing wind with stinging chips of ice in it whips up and tears at their clothes and hair.

Then the motes, cornered, use the very stones of the earth against them. Where part of the wall lies tumbledown, the rocks rise out of the ground, their jagged edges arching up, becoming--or showing themselves to be--the spines of a dragon’s back. It claws straining from the dirt, and a sharp bright note sings out as the hunter draws his sword. He shoots Saskia and Yumino a look that clearly says, _You are no more help here--get safely away_ , and then the stonedrake charges him.

Yumino tugs at Saskia’s hand, and they run together to the shelter of the temple doors.

_Why does it not fly?_ Saskia wonders. Then she sees that the hunter aims his swordstrokes at the beast’s legs and wings, keeping it from finding the footing or space it needs to launch itself. Yet he doesn’t seem able to do any more than keep it at bay.

When she can glimpse him, in flashes as he and the dragon circle each other, something seems off-kilter, some hesitation or even clumsiness in him.

She does not think he is often clumsy.

Over the sound of the wind, whimpering and wailing as wind should not, comes a low roar that sounds like nothing Saskia has ever heard, a roar such as a mountain might make, if it were awakened and stirred to anger, and the ground begins to shake again. The temple doorway sways, but holds.

The hunter stumbles, and barely evades a swipe of the dragon’s talons.

“We must put an end to this,” Saskia says. “I can call fire, but can it harm a dragon?”

“Surely it can hurt one made of shadow motes and stone,” Yumino says, and Saskia cannot help but feel a flash of admiration at how she keeps her composure despite her obvious fear.

“He will not hesitate to tell me if not, yes?”

A last resort, he said, but fire is a thing far easier for her than him.

“Be careful,” she tells Yumino, and edges closer to the hunter and the stone dragon as quickly as she dares as the ground continues to tremble.

The dragon seems less solid, as if its outlines waver, and it is no longer only the pale gray of the stones, but swirling with shadow; yet it battles on, and as the hunter tries to press his attack, his motions are unmistakably less graceful than before. Saskia braces her feet apart and calls the fire to her open hand.

For a bare second their eyes meet, and she sees only relief in his.

That is enough confirmation. She sends the flame out in a sweep of her arm, matches it to the curves of the stone beast’s body. The dragon jerks and screeches in rage, and turns away from the hunter to look for her. The slash of the sword blazes out with its sunshine brightness as he finally lands the killing blow. The dragon flails with wings, legs, tail, trying to take off, but its strength is gone. It lands as a jumble of rocks, as if it were never anything but.

The ground gives one last leap; then all falls silent.

By the time Saskia gets up from where she fell, she hears birdsong, and the breeze is light and warm again.

The hunter is slow to stand, and when he lifts his head, half his face is a mask of blood. From behind Saskia, Yumino gives a startled little cry. Saskia is obscurely grateful for her distress; it makes her own seem less pressing.

“You’re hurt,” she says, pointlessly, or perhaps not, for he seems as determined to ignore it as he was his wound yesterday.

“It’s nothing.”

“It is _not_ ,” Saskia snaps. She pulls her handkerchief from her sleeve and holds it out to him.

He doesn’t reach for it at first, but she waits, chin lifted imperiously, until one corner of his mouth quirks and he takes it. She supposes this is his version of being gracious in defeat.

When he blots the blood away, the wound is revealed to be only a hairline slash across his cheek, and Saskia recalls how the stonedrake’s tail lashed one final time as it made its last desperate effort to gain the air and escape.

She can be gracious, too. “Well, it is _almost_ nothing.”

“It will be safe to rest here now.” 

He takes one step before crumpling to the ground.

"North!" Saskia didn't realize she had started thinking of him that way until the cry leaves her lips. She drops to her knees beside him, and Yumino runs over and does the same. The shirt beneath his tunic is red with blood.

"'North'?” he says. “It sounds silly." 

" _That's_ what you're worried about?" He has clasped his hands over his belly in what looks like a twisted parody of a woman with child, except it's his life seeping out between his fingers, and Saskia cannot believe he complains about _this_ even as his blood stains the soil. "I can't just say 'you there.' Though it would serve you right if I did. We must get you to a healer."

"It’s noth-- It is not bad. But... I would appreciate some help standing."

She is not _very_ tempted to refuse just to be difficult, even if he deserves it for looking so _calm_ this whole time, but she does deliberately echo his resigned, annoyed words of earlier. "Very well."

With Saskia and Yumino both supporting him, they get him to a nearby house. “You should have told us,” Saskia says, and Yumino chimes in with her agreement.

“Why?”

“’ _Why_?’ So we could help you, of course.”

“Time is the only thing that can help such wounds, and, for me, not much time.”

“You’re not by yourself anymore, North,” Yumino says.

“I must resign myself to that name, mustn’t I?”

“Yes,” Saskia says. “And you may as well, while you are at it, also resign yourself to our helping you.”

The corner of his mouth quirks again. She's beginning to suspect it would be a smile for anyone else. “There are bandages in my pack,” he says.

There is a fresh shirt in his pack, too, fortunate, for Saskia doubts the blood shall ever come out of the other.

North pulls tunic and bloodied shirt off together. “This shirt should be burned.” He’s thinner than the padded tunic made him seem, and finer-boned, though his arms are muscular, no doubt from swordfighting.

Saskia takes the bundled cloth. “I will burn it.”

“We must clean the wound,” Yumino says. “Is the water here safe to use?”

North nods, and she finds a jug that is still whole in the bits of broken crockery in the kitchen, and goes to get some.

Saskia takes the ruined shirt to the fireplace and sets it alight with a flick of her fingers--she has already given away her secret, after all.

“The woman the motes had taken,” North says. “You are like her.”

“Only half,” Saskia says, looking into the flames. “My father is a farmer in Kallekot. I thought you might have guessed, if not before I called the fire today, then certainly then.”

“I guessed in Merebah.”

She looks back at him; that is unexpected. “Yet you agreed to let me come with you.”

“Spirits and demons are not my concern. Not unless the shadow motes claim them. You have nothing to fear from me, Saskia.”

Yumino returns in time to hear that, and catches Saskia’s eye.

_You did tell me_ , Saskia thinks.

The slash across North’s stomach still oozes blood, but when Yumino blots it away, the wound is much less bad than it seemed.

“Already it begins to heal,” North says. He seems to mind not at all being half-naked before them, looking uncomfortable only when Yumino wraps the bandages around his waist and deftly secures them.

“Is the pain very bad?” she says.

“No.”

“I don’t know why you ask him,” Saskia says. “He would not tell us if it were.”

“You’re probably right.” He sounds faintly amused. “But, truly, it is not. Thank you. For this, and for helping me before.”

“You’re welcome,” Saskia says.

***

North says he is not called anywhere yet, so they decide to rest in this house for the night and set out for Essalia in the morning in search of Saskia’s cousins. Saskia and Yumino take the second room to sleep in, where little remains to show anyone lived here only a short time ago, but now that the village has been cleansed, it seems only sad, not eerie.

“He is injured in every fight, it seems,” Saskia says quietly.

“I know.” Yumino sets her pack down, and stretches until her shoulders crack. “I feel bad for him.”

“It serves him right, if he goes hunting those who can think for themselves,” Saskia says, thinking of her cousins still out there.

“What if he doesn’t have a choice?”

Saskia pauses in unlacing her boots. It _is_ true that he speaks of being called instead of choosing to go--she has noticed this more than once, and she doubts he says anything carelessly. “I wonder why that would be.”

“Maybe he swore a sacred vow!”

“He is one I can certainly imagine doing so.”

Yumino settles into her bedroll. “What would your vow be, Saskia?” 

“To help my poor cousins.”

“ _No_ , for your life’s work.”

“Oh, of course. How silly of me.” She laughs. “I don’t know. Perhaps it would be to help all those whom humans fear without cause. What about yours?”

“To make something of myself, so that my mother will be proud, and my father sorry he left us.”

“That is a good vow.”

“Did you see his back?” Yumino whispers once they blow out all but one of their candles.

“No-- why?”

“It’s terrible.” She gives a little shudder. “It looks like he was badly burned.”

Could the shadow motes do that? They could likely do nearly anything, did they infect the right vessel for it. From what Saskia has seen in just these few days, they’re easily as formidable a foe as North himself. “That must be why he was reluctant to use fire. Oh, and I thought nothing of flinging so much at him!”

“I’m sure he’s not angry.”

“No, but I hope-- I do not suppose I could frighten him.”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

“Are _you_ all right?” Seeing what the motes can do proved unsettling for Saskia; for Yumino, who surely did not expect _this_ when she agreed to be guide and translator, it must be worse.

“It was a _little_ frightening. But I was with you and North, so I was never too scared.”

How remarkable she is, Saskia thinks, smiling fondly. “Yumino, you’re like no other human I have ever met!”

Yumino ducks her head, clearly pleased. “You’re like no one I’ve ever met at all. You’re wonderful.”

Now it is Saskia’s turn to feel abashed. “‘Wonderful’ might be a bit much.”

Yumino makes a face at her. “I like stories about the otherworld, and adventures. I never thought I’d have one myself! That’s because of you. And even if it _was_ frightening, everyone knows you can’t have a real adventure without _some_ scary parts.”

“You heard things in the dead voices, too.” Saskia has been sure of it ever since Yumino unwittingly replied to them out loud, and has wondered if she would feel better after speaking of it.

That seems enough encouragement for her to do so. “The motes...” she says slowly. “They said I was a burden. That... my father didn’t want me, and no one will, they will only tolerate me. Because...” 

Saskia opens her mouth, but then thinks twice about interrupting. The words spill out of Yumino as if she cannot help it, and perhaps, once they have left her, they will not trouble her so. “Because I am so _silly_ , and think the world is like stories, and I’m a bother who doesn’t understand real life.”

“They lied,” Saskia says. “You are a dear, and brave, and I was not jesting about you coming back to Kallekot. I should be happy for us always to be friends, and near each other.”

Yumino looks away, her eyes too bright, but she smiles as she does. When she turns back to Saskia, the smile has turned teasing. “And North? Should he come with us?”

“He wouldn’t.”

“Well, no... But if he would?”

“He is so strange, is he not? He’s prickly, yet he’s not unkind.”

“He’s on a quest. He probably doesn’t care too much about being... not prickly. _I’d_ want him to come with us.”

Saskia tries to imagine North in Pyotiria. It is strangely difficult, but she could be the one to show him her city, and he and Yumino would come to love it as she does. “Yes,” she says. “If he would, I’d like him to as well.”

***

Saskia opens her eyes, not sure what awakened her. It seems she can still hear it, and she listens for the echo in her mind’s ear, but it will not come. Then she hears the creak of the floor in the front room, and a quiet, strained sound of pain.

She goes barefoot to the door between the rooms. “North?”

“I’m all right,” he says, but she would not expect him to say anything else. She goes over and sits beside him, not too close, and he does not object. The light of the moon streams in where the roof is missing, and she can see him perfectly well. His skin is ashen beneath the olive, and sheened with sweat; his mouth is slightly downturned. Saskia, coming to know his expressions as she is, thinks the pain must be bad indeed for him to show it even this much.

It is still impossible to ignore how beautiful he is.

“If you hate it, we can call you something else.”

He seems to turn the idea about in his mind. “I don’t hate it. In all the years I’ve hunted the shadow motes, no one has given me a nickname.” Something in his hair catches the light, and Saskia notices for the first time a string of beads woven into the braid.

He leans forward, and his jaw clenches, as against a fresh wave of pain.

“Is there nothing I can do?”

He doesn’t answer at once, drawing a shaky breath before he does. “I have found no way to ease it. I’m... being put back together, and it is not only physical.”

“North, does this happen every time?” She cannot imagine enduring it over and over, alone.

“I don’t mind the name at all when you say it like that.”

_Impossible man._ “You didn’t answer my question.”

His mouth quirks. “Not every time.”

_So, far too often_ , Saskia thinks. “Yumino was right--you don’t have to do this alone anymore.”

“There is nothing either of us can do to speed the healing.”

“No, but I can keep you company.”

His face goes blank in what must be surprise, as if such a thing has never occurred to him, and Saskia fights an unexpectedly sharp pang of empathy. “You’re not very often around people, are you?” 

“Never for long. When I’m called to face the shadow motes, I must go.”

“’Must’--you said this before. Why must it be _you_?”

“There is no other,” he says simply.

He curls in on himself again, breath hissing through his teeth, and Saskia puts her hand on his arm before she can think the better of it. He covers it with his own, his grip growing painfully tight before he relaxes.

Scars, so old they’ve faded to silvery threads, mark his hands. She lightly traces the line of one. “What happened?”

“It was a long time ago.”

Another question he evades, but Saskia doesn’t press him this time.

“It’s getting worse.” He sounds almost as if he speaks to himself alone. “The motes are stronger. Or I am weaker.”

“I don’t think you could ever be called weak.”

“That is a pleasant sentiment, but I must deal in reality.”

“While we travel together, perhaps Yumino and I can find better ways to help you.”

He has not let go of her hand. “You would do that?”

“Of course.” _We are your friends, are we not?_ she almost says, but she’s not certain they are, not yet.

The worst of the pain seems over, and though North does not sleep, he grows quiet and leans back against the wall. Saskia slips her hand from his and does the same. 

Who was he, long ago? What did he dream or wish could be? 

She finds it as hard to imagine him as part of the life of a village as it is strange to think of him in Pyotiria, but surely his people were not _so_ different that they did not love, raise children, gather in celebration or commemoration. 

Or were things so different that his people were ruled by passions she cannot now imagine? He does not seem so utterly unlike humans, or herself, except that every so often she glimpses a reminder that he is.

She does not think he would speak of it even if he did remember, and she’s not sure he remembers.

He is not very like she assumed only days ago when first they met, not so cold and nothing so unfeeling. It is just that he is subtle, moods barely flickering in his face, the simplicity of his words masking their careful choosing. She is still thinking on this when she drifts into sleep.

She wakes with his blanket draped about her, but he has already left the house.


	3. Chapter 3

They hire a farmer going to the port to carry them in his cart. Saskia is unused to traveling in such a way, but North settles crosslegged in a corner with the ease of long familiarity, and Yumino is too eager to go somewhere she has never been to care much how they get there.

Yumino tries to get North to talk about himself, but he proves, to Saskia’s complete lack of surprise, to have a talent for evading questions in a way that makes it seem he has given an answer when all he has truly given is a reply. He does not answer her about where he comes from, nor about how he knows where next to find the shadow motes. When she asks if he has a sweetheart, he does not even pretend to reply, but simply gives her a flat look, and Saskia has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at how _predictable_ that response is.

“How is it that you speak Kallekotian so well?” he asks—blatant misdirection, but it works.

“I’ve always wanted to see the world, so I learned as many languages as I could. Each one is its own song, and it sings about the people and the country.”

Knowing as she does that a child with no father and no name in society’s eyes would not have been able to attend school here in Tiandar, Saskia can imagine Yumino then, that bright eagerness to learn sharpened by defiance and determination. She doesn’t know how much North can guess of what Yumino does not say, but it is not a little, judging from how his usual impassive expression warms somewhat as she speaks.

“When Saskia hired me, I was trying to find a ship to take me to Essalia.”

That, Saskia did not know. “All alone?” she says.

“I’m used to being alone. Though maybe not as much as you two.”

“You know more of spirits than most,” North says.

“I’ve read lots of stories about them. But almost none about shadow motes. Where do they come from?”

It is not hesitation that makes him pause, Saskia thinks, but it is something more than choosing his words carefully.

“They fill the empty places in the world. Abandoned towns, forgotten knowledge, hearts hollowed by grief or hate. They are the infection in a wound, and must be scoured out before the healing can begin.”

He has never said he _kills_ them.

“Why did my cousin in Merebah become motes at the end, when those in the village did not?” Saskia says.

“She had not been infected for very long. The motes had not yet settled into her shape for good.”

“Does that not mean they could still have been driven from her without harming her?”

That steady grey gaze, when he turns it upon her, is not as entirely pitiless as Saskia first thought. “It has never been done.”

“That doesn’t mean it _can’t_ be.”

He shrugs in a way that could not be more infuriating were it calculated to be, but she only gives a _tch_ and says no more. There is no arguing with him about the shadow motes.

When they reach the port, North gets down from the cart first, and holds out his hand to help Saskia. After a moment of hesitation that is mostly surprise, she takes it. He does the same for Yumino.

***

They have not yet booked passage to Essalia when North walks away from them, to the end of the pier, staring out over the water to the south. Yumino and Saskia trail behind him.

“I must go to Bakthio.”

“ _Bakthio_?” Saskia says. A day’s journey out of their way is one thing. Another continent is quite different.

“I am called. You needn’t--” He stops himself, and does look chagrined. “I am sorry for the delay.”

“Is it my cousin?”

“It is the shadow motes. I know no more.”

“Then I must go with you.”

He half-shrugs. “As you will.”

Saskia takes Yumino aside out of earshot. “Do you wish to come?” she says, for she is determined to ask first this time.

Yumino looks over at North. “We can be some help to him. And I _would_ like to see the southern continent.”

“I know. And I cannot see that we have any choice.”

So it is that they find cabins on a small ship bound for Bakthio, where Saskia never imagined her travels would take her, and luck is with them, for there is room for exactly three more passengers, and their departure is almost at once.

“See, we’re meant to go,” Yumino says, all but bouncing with glee.

Saskia keeps her opinion about this to herself.

***

Saskia’s dream wakes her with a jolt, as they nearly always do, but the details fade so quickly that even as she sits up to see if it is morning yet, all she remembers is a sense of darkness closing in.

“Saskia?” Yumino says.

“Did I wake you?”

“Oh, no! I’m too excited to sleep.”

The ship is never entirely silent, but it is the middle of the night--Saskia slept less than she thought--and the only sounds now are the creak of the masts and rigging, and the whisper of their progress through the water.

“Shall we try to see the rainbow rays?” Yumino says. “It’s a little late in the year for them, but the sea’s very warm here.”

“What are they?”

Yumino bounds out of bed and pulls her overdress on, but doesn’t tie it. “They’re fish with flat bodies and long rainbow tails. They look almost like capes that shimmer in the light.”

Saskia doesn’t much care to see them for their own sake, but Yumino is so excited that she does care that she should have her wish.

“All right, let’s go look.” She gets her own overdress to cover her nightrail, and she is glad of it when they reach the deck and find North there.

Yumino waves hello to him, and goes to lean over the railing, watching the wave the bow throws.

“Can you not sleep either?” Saskia asks North.

“I do not sleep much."

"Because you need not, or because you cannot?"

"Somewhat of both.” He gives her a look she has no more luck reading than ever, but it is not impassive. “How do you see through me so easily?”

She must laugh at that. “Do I? You seem as much a mystery to me now as on the night we met.”

He watches her with a solemn steadiness that makes her wonder what she is missing. “I am not so complicated, Saskia.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that. “We’re looking for rainbow rays,” she says instead.

“I once heard of a--” North begins, but stops himself.

Every time the cool mask slips, he seems to pull himself back--Saskia cannot guess why. _And you say you are not complicated! Impossible man._

“What was it?” Yumino says, looking back at them. The breeze blows a few locks of her hair prettily about, framing her face.

“Yes; you cannot begin so interestingly and then not tell us.”

“Can I not?”

“No. It’s a rule.”

His mouth quirks. “Very well. I heard of a song the fisherman sang in Harungo, on the coast, to draw out the rainbow rays and the luck they bring.”

Yumino beams. “Can you sing it?”

He looks not at her, but at Saskia.

She can’t help but smile. “Well, can you?”

North sighs, but he goes over to the railing beside Yumino, and Saskia follows.

He sings, in a surprisingly sweet baritone, a few lines in the trader’s tongue of Bakthio, a chant whose rhythms echo the swaying of the ship and the tides of the sea.

“Oh, look,” Yumino breathes, pointing.

The rays come, swimming alongside the ship, with their luminescent tails in every color of the rainbow and their wings fluttering gently, now blue, now green, now violet, just beneath the surface.

Saskia is nearly as fascinated by watching North as by the fish. Lit by the swaying lanterns, he is as beautiful as ever, but his eyes are warmer, and, cast into chiaroscuro, the near perfection of his features seems softened into something less stark. It is hardly fair for a man to have such eyelashes, longer and much darker than Saskia’s own.

Or maybe the warmth is in how he looks at Yumino; he does not seem to be only tolerating her. He did not seem so before, either, not even on the first night they traveled together.

Saskia moves a little closer to him, leaning out as Yumino has to watch the rays, and she feels his gaze on her for a long moment before he, too, watches the intricate dance taking place in the water. Quietly, just for her and Yumino, he sings a second verse, and more rays come, some of the larger ones spinning about as if to show off, some of the others driving forward for all the world as if racing the ship.

“North, this is amazing!” Yumino says.

He gives her a little bow. He is definitely growing fond of Yumino almost as quickly as she. It makes her like him more.

***

_\- The one they call the northern hunter. You have crossed paths with him. -_

_It is not a question. Saskia knows what the imperatrix’s next words will be. Horror steals over her like a dark bloom centered in her chest._

_\- He is inconvenient to our plans. Dispose of him. -_

_\- No! -_

_The moment the instinctive cry leaves her lips, Saskia knows she has given the imperatrix a weapon to use against her._

_\- You wish to see your father become shadow motes, then? -_

I cannot. I could not hurt him. Not even for you, Papa.

_But she faces North now with her dagger drawn, a storm of hail and shadow howling about them such that she can scarcely see him, and a roaring in her ears, a babble that comes clear as the voice of the motes._

_\- You can’t fight what you are. What you’ve been all your life. -_

_North only waits, his sword drawn but at his side, ready to block but not to attack._

_Saskia dashes wetness from her eyes and still cannot see him properly; he wavers as if underwater._

_\- I won’t do it! -_

_But she steps toward him and raises her dagger._

_\- North, run! Please run. -_

She tries to shout the warning, and the effort wakes her.

 _North._ She’s halfway to the door, stumbling as she shivers yet, only the cold is inside her, shaking her very bones, when she comes back to reality and knows he is not in danger. _Not from me._

Yumino murmurs sleepily something Saskia does not catch. Slowly, the shivering leaves her, but the unease lingers.

She will just go to peek at North, to reassure herself he is safe.

She goes quietly through the sleeping ship. It is the middle watches of the night, and even the single night-time lookout dozes at his post, lulled no doubt by ship’s gentle motion under reduced sail.

Saskia opens the door to North’s cabin as much as she dares and calls a tiny flame to see him by.

He is asleep, in a sprawl that would be ungainly were it anyone else but in him simply looks as if he were arrested in elegant motion, one arm outflung, a few curls that have escaped his braid fallen over his forehead.

As she begins to inch the door closed once more, he stirs. “Saskia?”

“I’m sorry!” she blurts. She slips into the room and brightens the flame she holds, thinking only to keep from being noticed by the crew.

North sits up and simply watches her, and she feels heat rise to her face at what he must think her purpose is in coming here.

“I had a nightmare, and I... I wanted to see that you were all right.” What nonsense that must sound, and she hastens to explain. “My kind can see things thus, things that may happen. And I dreamed you were in danger.”

“I am perfectly fine.” He pauses long enough that she feels even more how her cheeks burn, and grows nearly certain he does it deliberately. “Do you want to stay?”

“No! I mean... Yumino will wonder where I am when she wakes.”

“I see. Good night, then, Saskia.”

In her haste to flee, she only nods before scrambling out the door. _Impossible man._

***

They land on Bakthio at a port so small it is called only “Way-Station” in the trade language.

“I have been here before,” North says. “We can rest tonight, and seek the shadow motes in the morning. There is a bath house at the inn.”

Saskia and Yumino exchange a delighted look--washing with only seawater for days has left both of them feeling gritty and begrimed. “I should love a bath,” Saskia says for both of them.

“My people would all bathe together, men and women alike.” North’s eyes betray his amusement at Saskia’s shocked look. “But I suppose we must not offend our hosts.”

“Do you think North was telling the truth, or only teasing us?” Yumino asks as she and Saskia make their way to the baths. The air here is sultry, as it never becomes in Kallekot, not even in the summer, a heat that enwraps them, and Saskia welcomes it.

“I do not think he lies.”

“Mm. I think he does like to tease, though.”

 _It does not seem like him_ , Saskia thinks, but have they had much of a chance to observe him truly being what he is like? She would never have called him whimsical when they first met, but how else could she describe singing to call the rays just because they asked him to? “I think,” she says, as they reach the small wooden building that houses the women’s baths, “that he’s likely to surprise us many more times before our journey ends.”

Yumino grins at that.

Saskia’s hair curls at once in the steam of the bath. Yumino sheds the colorful robe with not a hint of self-consciousness, but Saskia hesitates. She is not _shy_ , only used to being well covered. She meets Yumino’s eyes for encouragement, but looks down again when she unties the belt and lets the robe fall.

She has noted that Yumino is more generously curved than she, and finds her eyes irresistibly drawn to her; admires her fine strong calves and the lovely rich brown shade of her skin. She could make herself look away, but she does not, and neither does Yumino, though her cheeks flush more the longer they gaze at each other.

They wash away the dirt of travel, with more splashing and giggling among the buckets and soap than is really necessary, then go into the steaming pool to soak away their aches. They are the only ones here at this hour, in a pool easily large enough to swim in.

Yumino ducks down into the water and comes up with her head sleek and wet as a seal’s. “Ah, this is perfect. I want a bath house.”

“When you come with me to Pyotiria, I will see that you get one.”

“Our house will have to be huge.”

Saskia laughs. “We deserve it.”

“What’s your real house like, Saskia?”

“I do not have one, only apartments.” The imperatrix wants her weapon close to hand.

“Oh. Is that usual in Kallekot?”

“In Pyotiria, it is. There are not really _houses_ there. It was planned all along to be the imperial city.”

“I can’t wait to see it.”

Saskia smiles, but she is coming to realize that the future they have spun so eagerly cannot be--not without Yumino learning what she really is.

“Saskia?”

“I am a bit homesick, I think.”

“I’m sorry. We can talk about something else.”

“Tell me about _your_ home, my dear.”

“I live with my mother, or did until I decided to see the world.” Yumino swims a few strokes around the pool with an easy grace that shows she is perfectly at home in the water.

“What does your mother think of that?”

“She says--“ She lowers her voice a shade and plays up her Tiandarese accent, usually faint. “’A girl alone cannot be too careful! But you must find your happiness, Mino.’”

“I like your mother. Mino?”

She blushes again. “She’s called me that since I was a baby.”

Saskia walks across the bath, feeling the water’s resistance and the way it wants to buoy her up. “When did you learn to swim?”

“I was so little, I don’t even remember.”

“I never learned.” It does not seem that it would be so hard.

“I’ll teach you in our bath house.”

“That would be perfect.”

***

Yumino is not yet ready to leave the bath, but the humidity begins to dizzy Saskia, so she goes back to their room. She hears North moving about in his, and taps on the door, meaning to ask when they should be ready in the morning, but when he opens it, she forgets her question entirely.

“Oh, your hair.” Freed from the braid, it tumbles past his hips in a cascade of dark curls. “It’s beautiful.”

He gives her a little bow. “Yumino is still bathing?”

“Yes. I may have to go fetch her out in a little while.”

He has not yet changed from the robe he wore to the bath house--it is strange to see him in the bright orange and red print instead of the somber blues and grays he usually wears, and Saskia is acutely aware of her own flushed face and bedraggled hair, for she intended only to lean into his room and ask her question.

He is still squeezing the last of the water from his hair. It certainly looks a lot to contend with, though his motions are efficient and graceful as ever.

“Shall I help you?” Saskia says impulsively. “Is that allowed?”

“So you have heard the tales.” He sets the square of linen aside and pushes some strands out of his face. “It’s true that my people let our hair grow until we are defeated in battle. But there are no taboos about touching someone else’s. Although...” He looks distant for a moment. “I cannot remember the last time anyone touched mine, or even saw it down.”

Has he not told them his name because he no longer knows it?

“I _have_ to, now,” Saskia says, not entirely meaning to blurt it out, but the words get a smile from North, so she can’t be too sorry. And indeed, she has been wanting to bury her fingers in his hair ever since he opened the door. How soft and heavy it looks!

“If you have to, I will not deny you.” He gets a comb from his pack, and, after a moment, they work out that Saskia should sit on her bed and North on the floor in front of her. “Would you braid it again, please?”

“Of course.”

It _is_ soft, she finds when she begins combing, and unexpectedly many-colored within the deep brown, some strands nearly black, some reddish, some closer to dark gold.

She tucks a stray curl behind his ear and thinks she hears the tiniest hitch in his breath. She hopes she kept her motions smooth enough that no break in them betrayed that she noticed, but she doubts he failed to catch that she faltered. Certainly she is acutely aware of every time her fingers brush his skin.

She takes her time combing--indeed, there are tangles enough to work at, though she is by now far more focused on his breathing and the set of his shoulders. She can feel the warmth of his skin through the thin fabric of the robe.

 _How much warmer he would be if I had gone with him into the bath, and washed his hair for him instead_ , she thinks. She can picture him almost as clearly as she can call to mind Yumino’s image. She has already seen him without his shirt; it would be a welcome change to do so when he isn’t bleeding. She can imagine the rest of him, too, slim hips and long, lean legs-- but she stops herself, feeling her face grow warm. That is quite enough imagination.

North relaxes as she works, his eyes drifting closed, and sinks slowly back until he’s leaning against her legs. He might make a quiet sound not unlike a purr when she lifts his hair in both hands to start the braid and her fingers skim along his neck once more.

_I didn’t know he would enjoy this so much, but I’m glad of it. I doubt I would ever have seen this side of him, otherwise._

“I almost forgot your beads.”

He holds up a hand, the long string pooled in his palm.

It has a small clasp by which it can be attached to the roots of a lock of hair, and Saskia secures it close to where it was before. “Like this?”

“Mm-hm.”

She wonders if he’ll fall asleep, so at ease does he seem. The thought makes her smile. _To think he could so easily be made agreeable--I should have tried this sooner._

“What do they mean?” she asks, weaving the strand in with one section of the braid. They seem plain beads of many different materials, none remarkable--polished stones, wood, a few of amber or metal.

“They come from where my village was.”

Saskia becomes at once much more careful with them.

She is almost sorry to finish the braid and tie it off with a bit of leather. North still drowsily leans against her. “Thank you, Saskia,” he says without opening his eyes.

She decides she can sit here a little while longer, and that is how Yumino discovers them when she returns.

“Oh, North, I want a turn braiding your hair someday, too! It’s so pretty.”

North’s mouth quirks. “As you will, Yumino.”

***

“The shadow motes are very close,” North says in the morning. “Not even as far as the next village.” A frown creases his forehead. “They have moved in the night. Or their number has grown.” He looks at Saskia and Yumino, but they both just meet his eyes--Yumino, Saskia sees, looking just as stubborn as she feels.

“Follow me, then.”

Low, green mountains hug the horizon, and there are trees in the distance that must be enormous, but here there is only scrubland, and Saskia sees no little spirits about at all.

They come upon a wheat field before long, the plants taller than Saskia. North barely slows before plunging in among the stalks, and she and Yumino follow.

She has not taken three steps before she turns to say something to Yumino and finds herself alone.

“Yumino! North!”

There is no response--she hears only the hiss of the wind through the wheat and the soft sound of the sea close by, sees only the grain in its stalks of unchanging gold.

No, not all gold. A shadow ripples with the wind, circling Saskia where she stands.

 _It is only the trickery of the motes_ , she tells herself. _They separate us to unsettle us._

She calls flame to her fingertips, holds it there like little candles. She dares not set the field alight, not with Yumino and North out there and Way-Station so close, but the motes do not know that, do they?

“Half-demon,” they hiss, not into her mind like before, but audible enough to raise the fine hairs on her arms, like the creep of insects across her skin. “We know you now. You fear the voices of your own kind. Do you know how easy it is for us to take them? Their passions, their hatreds, so like yours--”

“Stop it!”

The motes laugh, and it is terrible to hear, a sound at once like the hiss of a venomous snake and like icy needles along her spine.

The wheat bows in an arc some feet away from her, blackening and settling to the dirt. North has taken the container of salt and spun, letting it fly out at the end of its handle to cover more ground. Saskia runs for the circle he’s made thus, hoping she can reach him before the maze springs back up and separates them again, and, from farther away than should be possible, Yumino does the same.

A cloud of chaff, golden swirls and black, blows up. It forms itself into a mounted warrior and charges for Yumino, the thunder of hooves deafening.

She screams and throws a hand up as it bears down on her, and North at a run somehow pulls her out of harm’s way. The grains make a noise like hail when they hit him. Saskia grits her teeth, feeling useless, and puts on a burst of speed to reach them.

“I’ve been looking for you two for hours.” Saskia never thought she would see North lose his composure, but he appears almost wild now, curls coming loose from his braid, face flecked with blood, a hectic light in his eyes. His voice is hoarse, and that keeps Saskia from pointing out that it has not _been_ hours.

“What _was_ that?” Yumino clutches Saskia’s hand, and Saskia holds on just as tightly. Around them, the sounds of horses and mailed warriors echo, and the wind keens through the grasses.

“There was a great battle here. The land remembers.”

“What are we to do?”

“Salt water,” North says. “If we can drive the motes to the sea, they will have no escape route.” His hands are dotted with blood, too, but, predictably, he ignores it.

“Don’t you have any mugwort?” Yumino says.

“That will not work this time--they have taken the shape of another plant, and so are immune.” He holds his sword at the ready, turning with it to track the sounds in the wheat around them, keeping himself between them and Saskia and Yumino.

 _They toy with us still_ , Saskia thinks, but they do not, she notices, cross back over the line of salted ground.

“You know very well, hunter, how strong we are when forged in battle.” The motes speak for her and Yumino to hear; Saskia is certain of it.

North does not deign to answer.

“You know you’ll be ours in the end, too, don’t you?”

“You do not have me yet.”

The motes cackle their amusement as horribly as before. Yumino winces, and Saskia has had enough.

“Stop your prattle!”

They do, but a rush of sound rises, presaging a more concerted attack, and they whip out of concealment, a whirl of stalks and dust and chaff. Yumino’s skirts toss wildly, and Saskia is blinded for a moment by her hair whipping into her eyes.

But the motes arrow straight for North this time. He spins into the fight with the deadly grace Saskia has come to know, yet the motes change midair to evade him, taking full advantage of the shape they’ve infested.

He dashes the blood out of his eyes with the sleeve of his tunic, catches Yumino’s appalled look. “Don’t worry about _me_ \--worry about them!”

“Don’t you have anything to say to _me_?” Yumino calls.

North and Saskia both stare at her, though North barely hesitates in his whirling and futile dance.

Yumino lifts her chin, and the unnatural wind tears at her hair. Even the motes battling North seem to move more slowly.

 _She’s given you a distraction, Saskia--use it!_ She darts as close to North as she can.

“The salt.” She had an idea when she saw him fling it before, but did not see how to use it, until now. “How much can you get in the air, and how high?”

“Enough. And high enough.” He looks even wilder now, blood-streaked, his grimace of concentration verging on a manic grin, but she can see that he grasped at once what she means to do.

“We know how you feel--” the motes hiss to Yumino, calling her something in Tiandarese that Saskia does not catch, but which makes Yumino’s mouth tighten. “Never to belong anywhere, never to feel at home. That’s why you run to the other side of the world, isn’t it, little girl?”

Saskia meets her eyes and shakes her head. It is all she can do for her right now.

She shaped fire to the body of the stonedrake in motion; she can light a candle from across the room. This is not _very_ different--it is just that it is... thousands of candles. She takes a deep breath and nods to North, who swings the container of salt in a great arc, sending a spray as high into the air as she could have wished.

_Now._

Saskia breathes out, and tens of thousands of grains of salt spark into tiny flames.

With a roar like nothing she has ever heard, a wave of shadow surges away from the flames, toward the sea, and North gives chase.

Saskia holds the flame as long as she dares, letting it go out only when it must die or catch the whole field afire.

Yumino still looks defiant, hands clenched into fists, and Saskia runs to her.

“Oh, my dear.” She pulls her into a hug. “Are you all right?”

She nods. “I knew they would lie.”

“And they _did_.”

“I do feel I belong,” Yumino whispers, a shy smile tugging at her lips. “With you and North, I do.”

“You _do_. Let’s go find him.”

The wheat is bent low where he passed through, and it stays golden the whole short way to the sea. North is still on the sand, watching the churning of the incoming tide. The foam has an oily, poisonous-looking tinge that fades as they watch.

“That was bravely done,” he tells Yumino. He starts to reach toward her, but checks himself, as if not sure he is allowed, and she gives a _tsk_ and bumps his shoulder with hers. “As was your feat with the salt, Saskia.”

She nods in acknowledgment.

“North, how can you just stand there bleeding everywhere?” Yumino cries, having gotten a good look at him.

“It is not nearly everywhere.”

“Impossible man, that is not the point,” Saskia says.

“Can’t you be more careful?”

“I do not have that luxury, Yumino. I must do whatever it takes to defeat the motes.”

His stubbornness should irritate her, Saskia thinks, but she is beginning to understand it--no one has helped him in a long time (he could not, after all, recall the last time someone touched his hair, a confession more telling than he might have realized or liked). So she is rather more gentle than she might once have been when she says, “Can you be a _little_ more careful, and let us do some of it?”

After a moment, he nods. “I will try.”

***

At Yumino and Saskia’s insistence, they go back to Way-Station to tend North’s wounds.

A tiny old woman with eyes a startling blue in her brown face lets them into the healer’s hut, and immediately launches a rapid-fire volley of words at North in the trade language.

“This is Yahani Netha,” he manages to get in edgewise.

“ _Oh_ , a yahani.” Yumino looks awed, and the healer beams at her, the deep laugh lines about her eyes crinkling. “It means,” she tells Saskia, “not exactly ‘doctor,’ and not exactly ‘priestess,’ but something in between.”

The healer smiles even more broadly, already making her way to the long work table where drying herbs and other medicines are neatly arranged. The scents of herbs and tonics, sweet, spicy, and pungent, mingle in the air, the effect of them all together sharp but oddly soothing. She plucks a small pot from a row of them and hands it to North, then waits expectantly.

 _This isn’t the first time she has helped him_ , Saskia thinks.

North does not _quite_ sigh, but does look resigned as he opens the pot and spreads the salve over the pinprick wounds that still mark his face and hands.

Yahani Netha gives a brisk, satisfied nod, then turns to Yumino and Saskia. She says something she punctuates by pointing at North.

“She asks if--” Here he makes a face so eloquent of resigned embarrassment that only knowing she would make it worse by laughing keeps Saskia from doing so. “--if your young man is still in the habit of getting hurt like this.”

Saskia cannot resist. “ _Yes_.”

The healer nods as if she expected as much. She goes back to her supplies and quickly chooses what she wants, puts herbs and tonics into small jars and vials, makes a neat pile of tiny envelopes of powders, and, after a considering pause, adds an ebony box that, even closed, smells overwhelmingly sour.

North begins to protest, but she silences him with a gesture and a look, then indicates that Yumino should take the supplies, telling North something that sounds as if she scolds him.

“She says,” he tells Yumino, “that these are for you two, and that you are to... take care of me, even if I say I don’t need it.”

Saskia hides her smile behind a hand, strangely delighted by knowing that he _could_ have lied about what she said, but wouldn’t.

Yumino leans closer to investigate the box, and her eyes widen. “This is the healing tea of the savannah nomads! I’ve read about it.”

Partly by gesture and partly with some translation here and there from North, Yahani Netha goes through the medicines and supplies, showing Yumino how to use each. Saskia understands little, but is glad to see Yumino so clearly delighted--and somewhat surprised by North’s good humor at being treated like a disobedient child.

“I first met Netha when she was a young girl,” he tells her as the healer and Yumino bundle the supplies up in a small pack. “The shadow motes had claimed her grandfather’s spirit. He died in the war--the same one we saw the echoes of.”

“Something so long ago can still affect the present?”

“Our deeds become part of the fabric of the world. And, as history is woven, you can never truly say where or how the threads may be picked up again.”

***

They stay one more night in Way-Station, in the same rooms as before, for the next ship making the crossing to Essalia is not until the morning.

Saskia feels the full moon rise, and lets a sleepy Yumino know she goes to walk in her light. “It’s a tradition of mine.”

Yumino nods, and Saskia thinks she is asleep before she even closes the door.

She goes barefoot down to the ocean, where the moon’s reflection is brightest. On nights of the full moon, she has always gone to greet her.

She’s not the only one who slipped out.

North is kneeling at the water’s edge, bare to the waist, and Saskia is too stunned when she sees him to have a care for modesty. This is much worse than she imagined from what Yumino said.

His back is a horror of scar tissue, puckered and shiny in a way that clearly speaks of burns. The shapes are strange--it seems almost as if they might once have been intelligible symbols. She cannot help but imagine how it felt, and she must make some small noise of distress.

“You wouldn’t have been able to read them,” he says without turning around.

“Oh.” She feels she should apologize for seeing him, but she could not help it. “What happened?”

She thinks at first he will not respond. “My old life ended,” he finally says, “and a new one began.” He still doesn’t turn to look at her, but the rigid set of his shoulders eases slightly. “In fire, as such things often must.”

 _That is no real answer_ , Saskia thinks. She supposes she should be glad to have gotten any answer at all.

“I interrupted you--I’m sorry.”

“There’s no need to apologize.”

He dips his fingers into the water, then draws them along his forearms and over his chest and forehead, a shiver passing through him as he does. He shakes his hands off, and turns to look at her.

“What is that ritual for?” Ritual it certainly was; she does not need the full moon to tell her that.

“It helps to cleanse some of the energy of the shadow motes.” There are faint dark spots, like bruises, where the water touched him, but even as she watches, they fade away, though the scattering of tiny wounds remains.

“Does it hurt?”

He lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Only as much as it must.”

“Impossible man.”

When did that start to sound so fond?

North pulls his undershirt and tunic back on. “You came here with a purpose of your own.”

Saskia nods. He shared his ritual with her; it seems only fair that she should do the same. “Walk with me?”

She leads the way some distance down the beach, until the small cluster of lights that is the village is hidden by a curve of the shore, and the only illumination comes from the sky, and the shining path of the moon on the sea.

North could not ever fade into the background, not for Saskia, but he has a way of simply _being_ so that, with him beside her, she feels no more self-conscious than she would alone, though no one has ever been with her when she did this before. She wades into the water and speaks the words she has made as promise to the Moon Maiden.

“My lady, you wax and wane, but your love does not, nor shall mine. Thank you for watching over me always. I will continue to try to be worthy of your care.” She drops into a deep curtsy, then straightens, the calm she always feels at this moment wrapping her in its peace.

North’s expression is solemn. “That was lovely.”

“I do not think most of the gods care much for half-demons, but I have always felt that she does.”

“I doubt the gods think much of me, either. To say I am not their greatest devotee would be an understatement.”

They turn back toward the inn. North offers his arm, and Saskia takes it. She likes the sensation of her ocean-dampened skirts clinging to her legs as she walks; it feels as if she keeps the peace of the Moon Maiden with her that way. “Why is that?”

“I have wondered many times why they do nothing about the shadow motes.”

“Did they not send you to hunt them?”

“It was not the gods who set me on this path.” The unwonted bitterness in his voice makes her give him a sharp look, but he is lost in some private thought or memory. “Perhaps they don't care. It would not be the first time. Perhaps the motes are outside even their powers.”

Now he does see her curious glance. “Some things are. But I think it likeliest that they’ve simply left us to our own devices to see how we fare.”

***

North has begun to look ill by the time they return to the inn. Saskia slips quietly into her and Yumino’s room and fetches the healing salve.

“Here. Will it help?”

“It cannot hurt.” Saskia is alarmed to see his hand tremble as he opens the jar. _It is not only physical_ , he said of the healing in Tiandar, and the motes they fought today seemed stronger than the ones they faced there. Certainly they were more devious.

Saskia will not sleep. After decades with her sleeplessness, she knows its habits, and this particular tenacious feel to her wakefulness, well. North did not send her away last time. She sits beside him on the bed.

“Is it bad?”

He hesitates, but then nods. “It... aches. All through me and beyond me. It is hard to put into words.”

Whatever toll the healing takes on him that is not visible to the eye, it _is_ worse than before. Spells of quaking seize him, leaving him gasping for breath. Saskia reaches out, remembering that contact seemed to help, but he pushes her away, doubled over and trembling.

“There is nothing I can do,” he says, and the accent of his homeland, usually barely discernible, is so thick that she can barely understand him. “They are too many.” Whether it is memory or nightmare, or both, that has him in its grip, Saskia does not know, but she can see in his eyes that he is somewhere else.

“Who is? North? What is?”

Carefully, slowly, guiding him closer with gentle touches and tugs, she coaxes him into her arms. Only then does she realize that he pushed her away because he did not want her to see his tears.

He falls silent for a time, but holding him is like trying to embrace a statue, so tense is he. _The last time someone simply held him was probably before even I was born_. She tries to tell herself her heart doesn’t ache hollowly at the thought. His hair smells of woodsmoke and something faintly electric, like ozone.

He says something she does not understand at all, and holds on more tightly, hands fisted into her overdress, until he seems to recollect himself, and forces his fingers to relax.

“North...” It comes out thick past the fear tightening her throat and sitting cold in her chest. “Please come back.”

“I can’t,” he says, and she cannot tell if it is in answer to her or to his vision. “There will be nothing left.”

She does not know for how long she sits with her arms about him. It seems she feels something of what he does, though she cannot make sense of it; her throat aches with unshed tears, and she finds it difficult to follow thoughts through to their ends. There is darkness in her mind’s eye, and a huge, heavy loss, one it hurts even to approach thinking about.

She understands, now, the ache he spoke of--the very air about her seems a bruise pressing in from all sides, a weight that pulls at her, too, as if trying to wrench her, or them, apart. _If it is this bad for me, how much worse it must be for him._

She holds him more tightly. _Whatever you are, you shall not have either of us. Not as long as I am here._

Finally, North lifts his head, and blinks, and she knows he sees her now. “Saskia.”

It seems for a moment as if he will lean into her, but instead, he moves away, reasserting the distance between them. He has done this the whole time they have known each other, reaching out instinctively, pulling away as if he thinks better of it. For the first time, she feels the weight of how old he really is, how long he has been lonely.

“Better?” she says, knowing it’s inadequate, but not having the words for what she really wants to ask.

He nods. “Only... I am very tired.”

“I won’t leave you,” she blurts out, and she does not mean only tonight. “I won’t let you face this alone.”

This time, when he reaches out, placing his hand over hers, he does not pull back.


	4. Chapter 4

In Essalia, in the port city of Kartui, they are stopped by customs officials at the docks and taken to a small office. Then, it seems, they are forgotten, for hours pass with no-one coming to see to them.

“How long are they going to let us sit here? I’m so bored!” Yumino, who has been pacing the room, flings herself back into her chair and languishes dramatically, arm over her face.

North rummages in his pack. “I have a deck of cards.”

“We can play swords and bowls,” Yumino says, sitting up.

“How do you play?” Saskia asks.

“It’s a trick-taking game.” Yumino explains the rules, and the special combinations of cards to make a sword, and so take that trick, or a bowl, and have to give it up.

“Sometimes you can’t _help_ but make a bowl, but sometimes you _want_ to, because if someone ends up with eleven tricks, it’s bad luck, and they lose.”

“I think I understand.”

North proves excellent at the game, for he is just as difficult to read in this as he is in everything else, and Saskia is occupied with learning the rules and rhythms of play. Yumino tries to hide her open delight or chagrin when she sees her hand each time, but with little success.

They play around, and still no-one has even looked in on them. Yumino makes a face at the closed door. “My friends and I used to make it interesting by making the loser of each hand pay a forfeit the other players choose.”

Saskia glances sidewise at North and smirks. “I am willing if you are.”

Mischief sparks in his eyes. “Of course I am.”

Saskia deals, and Yumino’s losing streak continues with this hand. North looks at Saskia, ceding the naming of the penalty to her.

“What sort of forfeit do you usually ask?”

“Oh, lots of things. When my friends and I were children, it was considered very daring to ask for a kiss.” Yumino winks.

Saskia tells herself she is much too old to blush over something so silly.

“But usually,” Yumino goes on, “we’d ask a question, and the loser would have to answer truthfully.”

Saskia nods. “All right, a question, then. Where do you want to visit the most?”

“That’s a hard one!” She thinks it over. “I would’ve said Bakthio, before we went. But now I want to see your city, Saskia.”

“And you will.” She glances at North, and remembers her talk with Yumino in the empty village. “I should like you to come, too.”

“I would love to.”

She was so sure he would say something about not being able to forsake his hunt that she cannot hide her surprise. He looks serenely back, and now she feels certain he knew what she expected and confounded her on purpose. _Impossible man_.

After a few more hands, Yumino makes a bowl to force North to take the last trick, bringing his total to eleven and giving him his first loss. “Finally! I thought we’d never beat you.”

He takes his defeat with good humor. “Claim your forfeit.”

“Tell me something about your home.”

It is harmless enough, but Saskia knows by now the look of North enduring pain, even when he tries to hide it. “I think,” she puts in quickly, “that we ought to let someone decline a question if it’s too personal.”

She knows they both see the relief that flashes in his eyes.

“Very well,” Yumino says. “But you _do_ owe us a forfeit.”

“He must buy both of us drinks, if we ever leave this room,” Saskia says. “ _Fancy_ ones.”

Yumino grins. “Agreed.”

“Gladly.” North gathers the cards to shuffle.

Saskia loses the next hand when North and Yumino split the tricks between them, leaving her, embarrassingly enough, with none at all, and Yumino considers the penalty for a while, nose crinkling in thought. “Hmm... who’s the first person you fell in love with?”

She could not know. Saskia tries to make her voice light, though she is seeing her mother’s mad eyes. “I do not know yet--I have never been in love.”

She feels North’s attention on her sharpen, though she does not look at him, and he does not say anything. Why it should matter to him, she does not know. But she would almost think him distracted, for he loses the next hand.

“I want a proper hug,” Yumino says. “I _should_ have given you one in the field.”

North’s mouth quirks, and he opens his arms. Yumino leans over and hugs him tightly, and he returns the embrace.

“Saskia, too,” Yumino says when she moves away. “It’s only fair.”

Saskia opens her mouth to say that he needn’t, but his arms are around her before she can speak. It _is_ a proper hug, deliciously warm and lasting just long enough, and that mischievous glint is in his eye again when he releases her.

_If I_ did _ask for a kiss, which one of them had I rather choose? Perhaps they would both be willing._ Yumino she is more certain of, but North did give her that look that seemed to say he was ready for any challenge she cared to name.

He still surprises her at every turn, upending her expectations of him. She thought she understood him in the abandoned village, but she had not yet glimpsed the sorrow he carries. She thought she understood him in Bakthio, but had not yet seen his teasing side. What other revelations await her in the days to come?

Yumino loses the next hand, and Saskia, feeling only a little guilty at taking advantage of the rules thus, has something she needs to know. “Was it really all right that I volunteered you to come with North?” What she wants is not reassurance, so she goes on. “What I mean is, why did you agree to come with us?”

“I wanted to!” But Yumino seems to know this is not what Saskia is really asking. “I knew you two would need taking care of... and I wanted to do it.” She grins. “And I get to see the world at the same time.”

“You knew we would need taking care of?” North echoes, one eyebrow raised.

“Yes. And I was right, too.”

“Mm. I suppose I cannot argue, after all your help.”

“You may be impossible and I stubborn,” Saskia tells him, “but I think Yumino is more than a match for the both of us.”

Yumino beams as she deals the next hand.

“North, you choose the forfeit this time,” she says, after Saskia loses.

He is silent for so long that Saskia thinks he might refuse, and she cannot read the emotions that flicker in his face, save that he seems to consider something weighty. Finally, he says, “You may decline if this strikes too close to home, but why is it that you feel a special affinity for the Moon Maiden?”

_All of my kind do_ , she could easily say, and so sidestep the whole truth without actually lying. But that would be cheating, and besides, she _wants_ to tell.

“I have only seen my mother once. I don’t even know if she still lives. She left me with my father when I was a babe, and never returned.”

“Oh, Saskia,” Yumino murmurs, and takes her hand. There is something strained in the set of North’s mouth that makes Saskia feel as if she might cry, in that strange way of things when someone else’s worry or anger for her brings on tears when the hurt itself can no longer do so.

“When I was very small, I used to pretend the Moon Maiden was my mother. I spoke to her often, long before making my formal devotion. And I still feel she has more truly watched over me than the woman who bore me.”

Yumino squeezes her hand. North inclines his head in something more than a nod, but not quite a bow. “Thank you for telling us.”

“Why did you choose that question?”

“To understand you better.”

_What did he consider asking, and decide against?_ she wonders. She has a chance to ask him, for he loses next, but something tells her he wouldn’t answer.

_What were you dreaming, or remembering, that night in Way-Station?_ He will never answer that, either.

“Have _you_ ever been in love?”

It is a reckless question, out of her mouth as if it leaps forth with no conscious thought on her part, and she almost takes it back as soon as it is asked, but he can decline to answer if he wishes.

He does not decline. He meets her eyes, holds them for what seems a second too long. “Yes.”

That is all the answer she is owed, but she begins to ask more, only to be interrupted by the door finally opening.

Surely it will not take five people to deal with the three of them, but that is how many have come, three of them dressed with the conscious ostentation that petty bureaucrats affect in Essalia--the lower the position, Saskia has noted in the past, the more gold they pile upon themselves.

“I hunt the shadow motes. You would do well not to detain us,” North says. Just as Saskia has done, he clearly thought about a strategy while they waited.

“We have no intelligence on that,” one of the bureaucrats says.

“It _does_ seem to be in short supply here,” North says in Kallekotian, and Saskia has to turn her surprised laugh into a cough.

She hates to pull rank, but it does have its advantages. She draws herself up to her full height, which, though still not impressive, has always sufficed. When she must pass unnoticed in Essalia, she can hide her accent fairly well. She does not bother herself to do so now.

“You force my hand. I am Saskia Pyotir, here on urgent errand from her highness the Imperatrix of Kallekot.” She shows the calligraphed order that says as much, marked with the imperial seal. She lets an edge of sarcasm creep into her voice. “I trust in your discretion.”

It works even better than she might have hoped, all the officials becoming helpful to the point of obsequiousness and obstruction, such that, with five of them helping them, it takes five times as long to accomplish what one might have, but eventually they are sent on their way with many bows and well-wishes and, more to the point, a document granting them safe passage.

“If I could still travel as I once did,” North grumbles when they are on their way, “we would not have had to deal with them at all.”

“What do you mean?” Saskia says.

“I could have taken us from Way-Station right to the slopes of the Narwes.”

“By magic?” Yumino says.

“By something like.”

“Why can’t you--” Yumino begins, but cuts herself off.

North’s mouth tightens briefly. “I am not strong enough anymore.”

It seems longer than a few days ago that Saskia thought he would not lie, and she can see what this truth costs him in the telling.

***

From Kallekot, the Narwes mountains march west into Essalia, growing steeper as they go, and so wild that not even Saskia’s kin call them home in that country. Many of the jagged peaks are bare the year round, too steep and wind-blasted for snow to stay. Approaching them from the south, as Yumino, Saskia, and North do now, the foothills are gentler, greener, not yet touched by autumn color. The little spirits and demons of summertime are still out, and peek at them from their hiding places, though it seems to Saskia that they are fewer than they have been in years past.

“There are no shadow motes nearby,” she says, watching them.

“How do you know that?” North says.

She points to a sunflower spirit that has crept quite close. “The small spirits avoid them.”

“They do?”

“You cannot see them?” She assumed he could.

“Only the motes.”

The sunflower spirit follows them, staying close to Yumino, to whom it seems to have taken a liking. Saskia has to laugh at the way it hides behind her, poking its little head out now and again to give her and North wary glances.

“You have a friend,” she tells Yumino.

“I do?”

Saskia explains.

“Oh, I wish I could see it!”

“If it wants--“ Saskia begins, but the spirit has anticipated her. It crowds up against Yumino’s legs, tapping her with its leaves, and her face lights up as it becomes visible to her.

“Hello!” She pats its head gently.

North, looking back, _might_ smile, but it is so quickly, if he does, that Saskia could not say for sure.

The little spirit loses something of its skittishness toward Saskia as the day goes on, but will not venture close to North, who for his part does not try to approach it. “I think it objects to the sword,” he says after observing it.

“But it’s just a sword, isn’t it?” Yumino says.

North shakes his head. “Sunlight went into its making, which I imagine your friend does not mind. My will, as well, which I imagine it does, and more than that.”

Saskia raises an eyebrow. “How? And what?”

He flexes his fingers as if remembering, but says only, “Truly, I am not sure. I think I slept for a long time when it was done. But it cleanses as much as it cuts, and it cuts more than the matter of this world. I do not blame a spirit for being wary of it.”

It is disconcerting to hear him uncertain about anything. “Is that what happened to your hands?” Saskia says.

“How did you guess?”

“If the shadow motes leave no scar upon you, something else must have.” She catches the look Yumino gives her, and knows they are both thinking of his back, but she is starting to have a sense of when they have asked enough of him, and he evaded her question once already.

“What should we eat tonight?” Yumino says, clearly reaching the same conclusion.

They’re finishing the little stream fish North caught and Yumino spit-roasted (Saskia still with scales on her hands from helping to clean them), when North lifts his head and looks into the woods. A glance around their camp tells Saskia that Yumino’s spirit friend has disappeared.

“That way,” North says, with a tilt of his head. “And very close. I think we have been watched. There is something strange about this. I should go alone.”

“We don’t think so,” Yumino says.

Saskia cups a flame in the palm of her hand to light the way, for North says they will be heard coming anyway, and he is right.

Whatever form the motes have taken, they do not bother with stealth either, though they do not show themselves at first; leaf litter crunches as something moves about, edging closer.

Saskia is starting to suspect what they have found when the young woman steps out of the cover of the trees.

As soon as she sees her cousin’s tangled dark hair and the way she moves, cold foreboding grips her. This one is different.

This one, she knows.

She flings her arm out to block North as he steps forward.

“Jashree.”

Her favorite cousin looks at her without a hint of recognition.

“Do you not know me?”

Jashree lifts a hand wreathed in flame. Her eyes--Saskia is almost sure--are still brown.

“The shadow motes try to claim you, Jashree. But you can fight them.”

“Saskia--” North begins.

She doesn’t look back at him, keeping her eyes on her cousin. “She’s my friend! She still understands me.” _She has to._

“Let her try,” Yumino says. “You promised.”

The leaves rustle as North backs off.

Like her cousin in Merebah (whose name she never knew--why had she not bothered to learn it?), Jashree hangs back from attacking outright, but she does not hesitate to accuse Saskia in troublingly accurate echo of the dead voices in the shadow village.

“Yes, I know you. Traitor. Humans’ pet,” she hisses from behind the shelter of a tree trunk. “They build painted cages to hold you, to hold all of them, to channel and choke the water, on land ours by right.”

Saskia is brought up short by that--how could the beautiful city she loves so well have caused this? “You cannot turn back time! Humans will build their cities with or without me. And they gave me no choice! Should I have let my father die rather than join them?”

But she understands now. There is no place for Jashree and her other kin in such a world. _And none for me but what they allow me_ , she thinks, but pushes that thought from her mind.

“You should have stayed with _us_ , with your kind.”

“Humans are my kind, too.”

Jashree makes an angry gesture, flames flicking out from her hand in a short, sharp arc, but she lets them subside before they ignite anything. Saskia inches closer, and now she can see mottled patterns on her cousin’s skin, shifting just beneath it like ink in water--the shadow motes. But they do not yet fully control her; Saskia knows they do not.

She realizes she is shaking head to foot, she who has never been anything facing an enemy but sharp and hard as the sword they call her.

But Jashree could never be her enemy, not even now.

“Remember your castles?” She knows much better than to mention Pyotiria, though it is there in her mind’s eye, beyond the forest, the corals and blues and yellows of its freshly painted buildings bright in the clear pure air. “And the flag we raised? You had to lift me up.”

The shadows swirl under Jashree’s skin, blossoming to stain more of her, and Saskia sees that she is shaking, too.

“I was so scared, but I knew you wouldn’t let me fall.”

“Everything is different now. You know it is. Your humans came to drive us out.”

“What? I knew nothing of this!” But she believes her.

Jashree is all but consumed by the shadows under her skin, and she comes forward as if they pull her.

North can move very quietly, but not so quietly that Saskia misses his step behind her or the flick of his thumb against the sword to edge it out of its sheath.

“North, _don’t_.”

“You came to kill me!” Jashree wails.

Saskia raises a hand that still trembles. “No-- he doesn’t want to hurt you-- And I never would. Come back to the light.”

“You lie!”

Jashree lunges for North, hands ablaze with blue fire, far deadlier than any Saskia can call, and Saskia makes a desperate grab for her.

Blinding white pain where their skin comes into contact. Jashree’s scream claws the air.

Then nothing.

Saskia opens her eyes, the pain dulled to an ache in her hands and wrists. When she sits up, the trees and stars above her swing in a slow circle, but Yumino is there with a steadying hand on her arm. Jashree lies peacefully a little away from her, and Saskia scrambles over. She’s still breathing.

The afterimages of flame still darken Saskia’s vision, and she looks for North, who appears not to have moved.

“North, I’m sorry!” She was the one to keep him from drawing his sword, and now he is hurt for it.

He blinks. “I am all right.” He holds up his arms to show her the tunic sleeves whole and unburned.

Jashree stirs. “Saskia?”

Saskia helps her sit up, and pulls her into a hug. Jashree hesitates for a moment, then hugs her back. “I should not have said those things.”

“It was the shadow motes,” Saskia says quickly, and when Jashree shifts back, looking as if she might say something more, she stops her. “Don’t fret yourself about it.”

North has still not come closer. It is strange to see his face wiped clean of expression not by stubborn blankness but by something like wonder. "You were right. The motes have left her."

“I don’t know how I did it.” Saskia gets to her feet, and Jashree does as well, with a wary look at North.

“Neither do I,” he says.

“It was amazing, Saskia,” Yumino says. “They...” She makes a swirling gesture with a hand. “And they vanished. Are you hurt?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You saved me, little cousin,” Jashree says.

“I had to. Anything else was unacceptable.” She frowns. “The imperatrix has sent her troops to the wilds?”

“Yes.”

_That_ is disturbing; the imperatrix has ever been content with the unspoken truce between humans and other creatures, and they have coexisted under her rule, if not always as peacefully as they might, then at least without open warfare.

“Why? What do they do there?”

“I don’t know why.” Jashree’s eyes are almost as dark as when the motes had her in their grip. “They come, and they attack and take us away.”

“Where?” Saskia cannot imagine what the imperatrix could intend to accomplish by doing this.

“I do not know.”

“I will speak to her.” What good it will do, Saskia doesn’t know, but she must try.

“And I will tell the others,” Jashree says. “There are yet some hidden places where we can weather this storm.”

“Will you not stay and rest for the night?”

“I do not need rest, little cousin. Besides, the sooner I am returned, the fewer we may lose to pointless fighting.”

After one more hug for Saskia, she goes on her way east, and the others return to their camp, where the sunflower spirit hurries over to Yumino and snuggles against her when she kneels to rekindle the fire.

“Like your other cousin, she had not been infected long,” North says. “That must be why the motes could be driven out in such a way. Or perhaps--” His mouth quirks. “Saskia is truly that stubborn.”

“She came most of the way to us,” Yumino says. “I think she wanted our help, even if she didn’t know it.”

Saskia looks eastward and says nothing.

***

Saskia stopped Jashree from speaking of it, but they both knew there was truth in what she said.

Truth that she must tell Yumino, for she hates the thought of her learning it from anyone else. As for North, she expects he already knows, and more, that he understands. But Yumino is an innocent, and human. She knows nothing of finding yourself where all your possible choices are bad--something North may, indeed, be even more familiar with than Saskia.

She already feels a coward for waiting until she and Yumino sit together in the faint light of the banked fire, so she will not try to hide the ugliness of it in pretty words. The sooner the brutal truth is out, the sooner she may deal with Yumino’s reaction.

“They do call me sword of the imperatrix,” she begins. “When she commands it, I kill... Enemies of Kallekot, within and without, and sometimes those who are simply... inconvenient to her. I am not proud of it. Humans’ pet, Jashree called me. She was right, for all that I have no choice.”

Yumino’s eyes go wide, but there is none of the condemnation Saskia feared in her face--there is only sorrow for her. “Saskia, don’t say that. She holds your father, you said.”

She nods.

“It _does_ make a difference that she’s forcing you to work for her.”

“Does it? Those I have killed are no less dead.” Not even Yumino can still think so well of her now that she knows the truth.

But nothing at all has changed in the way she looks at her. “I think Jashree would say it matters.”

Saskia did not think of that. With Jashree carrying a warning to all their kin, she could make a very great deal of difference. _Whatever they are being taken for, it cannot be good, but because of her, many may be spared._

She doubts Yumino considered all this--she simply believes in Saskia. She does not trust her voice to answer. Instead, she moves closer, and Yumino reaches out and with perfect simplicity loops her arm about her waist.

_I have spent my life between two worlds, never truly feeling as if I belong, either. But with you, I do._

She wakes nestled in Yumino’s arms, their legs tangled together, the jasmine scent of her hair filling her senses. She would gladly stay a while, but a resolution sits firm in her mind, as if she mulled it over while she slept and came to a decision. She carefully extracts herself-- _I will stay next time_ \--and goes over to North where he is packing his things.

“Even after we find the last of my cousins, I want to keep traveling with you.”

Something sharp and bright flares in his eyes--but he just as quickly represses it, and it seems he takes more care than usual when he speaks. “Of course, Saskia. But why?”

She feels even more unwontedly hesitant now herself--she has barely put her reasons into words yet, only felt them. “I have been a tool of the imperatrix, sometimes for good, but often for ill. If I can save people from the shadow motes... I know it cannot undo what I have done or make it easier to live with. But perhaps I might put some small amount of good back into this world in recompense.”

She knows he will not lie to her. What she does not expect is the understanding she sees in his eyes. He nods. “You deserve that chance as much as anyone, and more than many.”

“North... thank you.”

“You are welcome, but I should thank you as well. I can exorcise the motes, but I thought it was impossible to free any of those they have claimed. Perhaps it is only impossible for me.”


	5. Chapter 5

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know.” North frowns at the people walking by, at the shops and the wares, at the carts clattering past. “Close, but I can tell no more than that.” His sense of the motes has brought them into Tankyra, one of Essalia’s main cities, but no closer to them than that.

The streets are narrow here, the buildings taller than those in Tiandar (though not yet as tall, and much uglier, than those in Pyotiria), and they lean out over the cobblestones as if trying to meet in the middle. Yumino is fascinated all the same; here, she is the one who draws curious looks, bright as a flower amid all the grey and brown and smiling at everyone.

Saskia looks for the little spirits who gather everywhere humans do. They are here, too, if not as many as in her home or Tiandar. There is something forbidding about cities in Essalia that she cannot put a finger on, and she thinks they may mislike them as she does. Yumino’s sunflower friend did not pass beyond the borders of the forest, patting her in clear farewell as they had to leave the woods behind.

Then she sees some spirits that are _wrong._

They’re little cats with long tails and wings like crows’, not white or grey or black, but with no color at all, as if cut out of the air, or missing from it. Saskia finds that her eyes sting and slide away from them when she tries to focus upon them.

“There.” She points to the wall where they sit, which is otherwise simply a stone wall.

North goes toward it, stepping over a place where the top rows of stones are missing., and Saskia and Yumino follow.

He whirls to face them, eyes wide, calling a warning Saskia doesn’t hear. They’re too close behind him to stop.

The world disappears into black.

When Saskia next knows herself, she can feel stone floor beneath her palms. Can feel a chill in the air.

Feels most of all a terror that seems centered in her chest, howling emptiness growing large enough to swallow her whole--

“Saskia?”

Just hearing his voice blunts the edge of the rising panic, and she reaches blindly into the dark, finds his hand, reaching for hers. “North.”

She must grab too hard, trying to hide how her hand trembles, but he simply threads his fingers through hers and lets her hold on. “Can you come closer?”

“I think so.” She makes shaky progress, feeling her way across the floor, and as soon as she is close enough, he pulls her into his arms, surprising her enough that she forgets to be afraid for a moment. “What--”

“Better?”

“Y-- yes, actually. Much better.” Indeed, the dark is still heavy all around them, but the stark terror of it has receded to something she can fight. “How did you do that?”

“The runes on this tunic offer a measure of spiritual protection. The fear is not all yours. Try to relax.”

She discards a sharp retort-- _try to_ relax _? truly?--_ because he _is_ helping, and after a moment, she settles her head against his chest. His fingers ghost over her hair, smoothing it as he might a cat whose fur is standing on end.

“Yumino,” she says.

“She was pulled away.”

“Is she all right?”

“I think so. I cannot pick her out, but there are humans not far from us. The motes are shifting-- I think they were not certain what to make of the two of us.”

Saskia would laugh at that if she could.

North turns his head to whisper in her ear. “Keep talking. It will occupy their attention.”

“I hate this,” she says, “being subject to such an irrational fear.”

“Most fears are irrational. We imagine what might come to pass and fear it, but most often, it never happens.”

“I can’t imagine _you_ being afraid.”

“My greatest fear has already found me.”

Saskia hesitates to ask, but for him to mention it at all invites the question. Perhaps he means to distract the motes with it, as well, offering up a tidbit they cannot resist, as Yumino did in Bakthio. “What happened?”

He’s silent for a long moment, and she thinks she might have asked too much after all, but he keeps toying with her hair in that idle, soothing way.

“I was not always the only one of my people. My village was destroyed, and the rest massacred. I was left for dead. Indeed, I thought my death had come for me.”

“Oh, North. I am so sorry.” Her throat aches with a pang of sorrow for him. It is not pity--she feels certain he would detest any hint of pity as much as she would--it is much closer to anger at those who did that to him. She shifts enough to slip her arms around him. He still smells of woodsmoke.

“It is said,” she says, for she feels she must match his honesty if she can, “that my kind draw our power from the light of the moon. I don’t know if that is true, but we do fear the moonless night most of all.”

“You didn’t want to tell me what you are at first.”

“I did not know, then, if you would see a difference between me and my poor cousins. Many have not.”

She is as aware of the terror as if it sits right outside the circle of North’s arms, but she does not _feel_ it. She _can_ feel his heartbeat, reassuringly steady. How is it that being near him is such a comfort? Most likely it is only the runes worked into his tunic.

“‘Fire witch’ is not what we call ourselves, you know.”

“Oh? What do you call yourselves?”

“Moon daughters.”

She feels through his chest the thoughtful hum he gives. “That is better.”

“North?” she says after another moment. “Do--” It’s much easier to talk to him when she doesn’t feel he is looking through her, but her nerve only carries her so far, and she remains aware of the listening, waiting presence of the shadow motes.

“I will never be angry with you for being curious, Saskia.”

“Do you have a real name?”

He’s silent, but she can tell he isn’t ignoring the question, only deciding how he wants to answer. “I no longer need one.”

It is so quiet that she can hear his even breaths and the rush of blood in her own ears.

“Oh!” Embarrassed at having forgotten, she holds an arm out away from their bodies and tries to call fire to her fingertips. It will not come. “I cannot make a light for us.”

“It’s all right. This darkness is partly an illusion. I think I feel a way to undo it now.” He leans closer to whisper once more. “I will let go. When I do, concentrate on the brightest thought you can. A memory, an idea-- whatever you think will best keep the darkness at bay. And when I say to get down, do it at once. All right?”

She nods against his chest.

He lets go.

The fear roars back, but she thinks of Yumino curled up with her, arms about her so she felt safe, and how her confession made no difference at all to her. She thinks of the warmth, and the hope that began to glow inside her as she realized that she had not, after all, made Yumino fear or hate her.

As if from far away, she hears North call, and flattens herself on the stone floor. The sword draws a line of light across her vision, just above her, that flares and widens, motes boiling away at the edges, until the illusion of darkness is gone.

The room of stone is long and low-ceilinged and empty of anything but the two of them and a row of perhaps a dozen humans, kneeling or sitting, all staring into space.

“Yumino!” Saskia starts to run to her, but North catches her arm, holds it when she tries to jerk away. “Let me go!”

“The motes work in her mind, more deeply than they could reach into either of ours. They could use how you care for each other against you.”

She wants to hit him for sounding so calm, when Yumino looks as if she is _gone_ from her body, her face empty, but she only pulls her arm from his grip and rubs it, scowling at him.

“I have seen something like this once before, in a temple of the Expositor.”

“The... what?”

He shakes his head. “A god whose memory is lost to this world. Those who ventured into the temple became mired in their own minds. This, too, tastes of something forgotten.”

“Yumino needs us!”

He meets and holds her eyes. “Saskia, I will free her.”

She takes a deep breath to calm herself. She believes him. “How can I help?”

“Take this.” He gives her the container of salt and shows her a lever to press to make a stream flow out. “I’ll draw the motes from them. When I have, make a barrier to make sure they cannot go back.”

“How are you going to get the motes out?”

His smile is almost feral. “I am a very tempting target.”

He lifts his sword and the air goes still and flat as glass, but seems to hum yet with some charge, like before a lightning strike. Saskia’s ears buzz. The humans don’t react at all, but remain like a line of statues.

“You know what this is, don’t you?” North says without raising his voice. “Are you so afraid of it that you’ll settle for taking these humans?”

He clearly hears a response that Saskia cannot, and he laughs in a low, mocking chuckle that reminds her that he can be frightening. “I see. Easy prey is not as satisfying, though, is it? But perhaps it is all you can claim.”

The air trembles.

“Even as many as you are,” North says, pacing along before the line of people, “you dare not try to turn _me_.”

For a moment there is nothing but the humans frozen in place and the thrum of the air, strained almost to shattering.

Then a cloud of motes gouts forth from the humans’ eyes and mouths and wraps around North.

Saskia freezes with horror at the sight, until she recollects herself and tears her eyes away, because she _must_ , and hurries to circle the humans with a line of salt. Some of them begin to stir as she does. She feels the swirl of otherworldly energies as North fights, but she focuses on her task, and steps inside the salt line, next to Yumino, before closing the circle.

“Stay in here,” she tells the humans. Yumino hasn’t moved yet, but her face no longer looks slack and lifeless.

Bright flashes pierce the dark maelstrom--North is winning. Saskia’s shoulders slump with the release of tension she didn’t realize she carried.

She has never seen North when he is not fighting through injuries. In Merebah, she saw only a hint of how deadly and graceful he can be. Now she cannot look away. With the intensity of his focus, he looks as sharply, starkly beautiful as he did then, but she cannot think of him as cold, not anymore.

The black cloud falls to tatters, and the stone room melts away. The sword glints as North sweeps it in a circle to clear away the ragged remnants of shadow.

Saskia kneels and touches Yumino’s arm, and her eyes open.

“Saskia, you’re not hurt!” she cries, and hugs her tightly enough that Saskia thinks she knows something of what the motes showed her.

“Oh, my dear, I’m perfectly fine,” she murmurs, holding her just as close.

“And North?”

“As ever.” She tips her head toward him. “He was brilliant.”

He is not hurt, either, not that she can see. He makes a circuit of the wall, checking that no motes remain. The spirits scurry away from him. They have their colors back, and look like little jeweled, winged cats now.

Many of the humans are slow to rise, but seem to be unharmed. Yumino gets to her feet and goes to the ones who appear the most distressed, speaking to them and comforting them. Saskia follows her, unwilling to be too far apart, and tells the others what happened.

“Some of them have been here for days,” Yumino says.

Most hasten to leave once they can, but one woman with rich trimmings on her dress goes over to North.

“Simply give them my name,” she is saying when Saskia and Yumino join them, “and you and your friends will receive our town’s best hospitality. It’s the least we can do.”

North bows.

“I am very personally grateful, too.” She puts her hand on his arm.

“Thank you,” Saskia says, a shade too loudly, and the woman startles and drops her hand. “We are happy to help.”

North’s mouth quirks.

“You said these motes were something forgotten. What was it?” Saskia asks once the overdressed woman has gone and Yumino has hugged North, who stood straight and still for a moment, but then hugged her back.

“I only glimpsed it. The ways of a people long since killed or assimilated.”

_Not so unlike yours_ , Saskia thinks.

“A proud people.” North looks at the low line of the wall as if it speaks to him--as it well might. “Warlike, but honorable. That is all I can see. The memory leaches from the stone already.”

“Are there many shadow motes like that?”

“They are rare. Most memories fade into the weave of the worlds. The motes are drawn only to those they can infect. When something is wrong in the body, muscle cramps around the wound. Where the worlds hurt, it’s not so different.”

“You don’t hate them,” Yumino says.

“Of course not. I never have.”

***

Even Saskia must admit that the finest hotel in Tankyra is _almost_ as fine as the best in Pyotiria. The rooms are brightly lit, with gold-trimmed white paneling and ceilings as high as those in the imperial palace. The beds are almost the biggest she’s ever seen--Yumino exclaims over them and bounces on one as soon as the staff leave them.

The woman who was so overly friendly to North turns out to be the daughter of the mayor, and, just as she said, when they mentioned her name, they were shown to these, which seem to be the best rooms (Saskia does not fail to notice that they separated her and Yumino from North), and given a lavish dinner in the dining room. It seems nearly everyone in the city has heard what they did, and knows someone who was missing. They are visited by a steady stream of folk offering their thanks. Yumino asks after each of the people the motes stole, remembering many of their names, and listens eagerly to the stories.

“When the first ray of sun fell upon the land and cast the first shadow,” North is saying to a young man, “that shadow fractured into a million million motes. They spread through the world, and cause their mischief to this day.”

Saskia leans closer to him. “Is _that_ the real story?”

He shrugs, amusement in his eyes.

_He is not used to this,_ she thinks, watching as he tries to be gracious but becomes more uncomfortable as the meal goes on.

With the skill born of years at court, she begins to turn attention away from him and accept people’s thanks and parry their questions herself instead. A few try to press gifts on her, and finally it seems more polite to accept them than not. Jars of preserves, chocolates, and the little wooden carvings given for good luck in Essalia soon line the edge of the table. Saskia discreetly puts some chocolate aside for herself, and picks out a pretty length of tartan and a carved wolf to make sure to show to Yumino and North.

By the time the excellent dessert, a kind of fluffy cake Saskia has never had before, is done, Yumino is blinking sleepily and North is eyeing the door with blatant longing.

“How do you think they got that cake so tall? I suspect magic,” Saskia says when she and Yumino are back in their rooms.

“Everything was so good! I could’ve eaten a dozen of those tiny fish.”

“I did feel bad for North.”

Yumino kicks her shoes off. “It was nice of you to fend people off for him.”

Saskia drops onto one of the beds. Even with her arms stretched above her head and her toes pointed, she cannot touch the headboard and footboard at the same time. The mattress is so wonderfully soft that she contemplates stealing it, never mind how wildly impractical that would be.

“He does not seem shy around _us_ , not anymore, but I think he is with other people.” Odd to think that she took his reserve for coldness not so very long ago.

“I don’t think he’s been close to anyone for a long time. But now he has us.”

“Not _right_ now,” Saskia points out. "It seems a shame for him to be alone."

"I’m sure he could find companionship if he wished.”

_Like the mayor’s daughter._ "That’s not what I meant." She does not much like the idea, but puts the thought aside as irrelevant. "I meant tonight, after what we went through today. You and I have each other, but he has no one."

“It wouldn’t have been proper to put us all in one room.”

“Yes, but propriety can go hang.”

Yumino grins. "Shall we go keep him company, then?"

"We could at least ask if he _wants_ company, yes?"

As it turns out, he does, and Saskia thinks she detects a hint of amusement in his eyes as he lets them in. It is still difficult to tell with him.

“I am perfectly all right,” he says, “but these rooms did seem empty. I was about to come to you.”

Both suites have been amply supplied with good Essalian wine, and Saskia pours each of them a glass of a ruby-red variety. They sit on the absurdly oversized chaise before the fire, all three fitting easily.

“You weren’t affected by the motes today?” Saskia says.

“It’s as I said. They have nothing to frighten me with.”

She is not sure what part is the lie, but he is lying to them for the first time, though when she studies him to see if he gives any sign, he looks as composed as ever. She will ask Yumino, later, what she thinks.

“I still don’t really understand how they did that to us,” Yumino says.

“When motes are... memories like that, they can reach for people’s thoughts. Calling them ‘memories’ is not exact; they are more than that, but still similar. Like calls to like, in the otherworld.”

_Is that why my poor cousins are so afflicted? And what does that mean for me?_ Saskia dares not ask the first for fear North will intuit the second, and she wants from him neither the harsh truth she fears nor the empty reassurances that would be even worse, for though he may believe her safe from the motes, he cannot _know_ , can he?

She catches his glance at her and knows he has read something of it in her face anyway. “Demons are not any _more_ likely to be taken than any other creature,” he says, “except that they live longer and so see more of pain in the world. The motes do not make judgments. From what Jashree said, your cousins felt betrayed and feared losing their home. The motes have ever loved to make their own use of such feelings.”

Saskia nods, and fetches the bottle of wine to give herself a moment to think. Perhaps it is not true, after all, that there is a darkness in her that could grow with but a little coaxing. She has always thought the warning her mother gave her meant shadow already lived in her... But she need not puzzle it out now. She has lived many years without thinking on it too much; she can live many more before she must.

“You.” Yumino pokes North’s chest. “You took much too big of a risk.”

“They cannot claim me, little flower.”

“Why not?” The question comes out more sharply than Saskia intends. She passes the bottle around and sits back down beside North.

“Because of what I am.” There is a forbidding finality to his answer she has not heard since the very first days of their traveling together, and she is taken aback for a moment. But perhaps he only wishes to forestall more questions about a painful memory--for surely it is something to do with his people.

Yumino takes a good swig from her glass and goes back to toying with his hair. “I think I could snare Saskia with your braid,” she says, lifting it as if to try.

“Let us not,” North says, then gives an amused hum. “Not just yet.”

“You said motes like that are rare, right?” Yumino says, and Saskia reaches over and pats her shoulder.

“Do not fret yourself, Yumino. We’re unlikely to see such motes again. Today was only the third time I have encountered them.”

Saskia has been able to feel the flush that rises to her cheeks as soon as she has any alcohol for some time now, and perhaps the wine is why she asks what she has so long wondered. “In how many years?”

“As long as I can remember.”

“ _North_.” Yumino gives him a stern look.

He refills all their glasses again, though only Saskia and Yumino need more. “I don’t know the exact year. House Habernoff ruled in Kallekot.”

“That was over a thousand years ago!” Saskia says.

“Then that is how long.”

How long has he lived that he does _not_ remember?

Yumino leans against North and stretches her arm out behind him to stroke Saskia’s hair. _She certainly likes to pet both of us_ , Saskia thinks, and smiles fondly _._ North doesn’t _seem_ affected by the wine, but he is nearly smiling, too. “I knew a minor princess of that house quite well, once.”

Saskia stares.

“She had red hair, too. But yours is lovelier, Saskia.”

Saskia cannot stop staring. "I've never imagined you having..." She falters in embarrassment, knowing her cheeks flame even more, but makes herself go on. "Those sorts of... entanglements."

He disconcerts her entirely by bursting out laughing. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he does are rather attractive. "What you must think of me."

"You don't exactly go out of your way to be charming."

"I suppose not. I lost the knack of it a long time ago."

“You are charming in spite of yourself,” Yumino says, and Saskia is the one who laughs this time, for she is completely right.

They sit for a time in companionable silence, watching the fire, sipping wine.

“Your cousin in Merebah,” North says. “I wondered, then, why you had pursued her, and I guessed she was your kin, but that is not the only reason, is it?”

“No.” Saskia does not want to stir from where she has ended up, nestled against North’s side with her hand and Yumino’s linked across his chest. “I must do it, and not only because it is the imperatrix’s will. I should do it even if she had not commanded me. My cousins are my kin, but I belong to Pyotiria as well. If one has wronged the other, it falls to me to make it right. But... it is true that the imperatrix holds my father as her ‘guest.’” Her sarcasm gives the word an ugly twist. “She has never threatened him outright. She has not needed to. He is very old now.”

Yumino squeezes her hand, and North rubs the back of her neck until some of the tension leaves her. Saskia smiles weakly despite the dark turn her thoughts have taken.

Alexy Pyotir’s death would free her--she has known this for decades. Has hated herself for even thinking it, for is there any other man who would have taken in a half-demon child and loved her so much?

“I do not want him to die a prisoner.”

“He won’t,” Yumino says, sitting up straight. “We’re going to help you. Aren’t we, North?”

“Are you asking me or telling me?” His mouth quirks. “My answer is yes either way.”

“You would do that for me?” Saskia sits up, too, feeling tears suddenly all too near. Her gaze settles on North. “Both of you?”

“I would see you free, Saskia,” he says, “because it is wrong that you’re not.”

“I have to go with you--I still expect my bath house in Pyotiria,” Yumino says, with a wink.

Saskia hugs them both, a little awkwardly until Yumino crowds closer, and North makes a face at being climbed over that sets them all laughing again.

She dozes off a little later with her head on North’s shoulder, and sometime in the night, Yumino curls around both of them, her head pillowed on Saskia’s skirts.

She has no nightmares.


	6. Chapter 6

Saskia would say she has no reputation to ruin, if anyone were to ask her, but for Yumino’s sake, they shouldn’t be discovered to have spent the night with North. Besides, it is amusing to sneak back to their rooms just before dawn, tiptoeing hand in hand and holding back laughter.

_I have never done such a thing as this, not even when I was young. If I did not feel lonely, then--and in truth, I did not--it was only because I knew nothing else._

“North was lying when he said the motes have nothing to frighten him with,” she says once they are safely back in their rooms.

“Maybe he just didn’t want to tell us.”

“Maybe.” Saskia frowns, thinking back. She was too preoccupied by her own fear in the moment to do much more than heed his words; it was only when North spoke of it later that she knew he was keeping something from them. “He did not seem to be bothered by them in the darkness... But I suppose he _would_ hide it if he were.”

“He’s had to be strong all alone for a long time.”

Saskia has not thought of it thus, but it rings almost painfully true. _I should have realized the same thing long since._

“So have you,” Yumino adds.

Saskia blinks. “Not as long as North. Of that I am quite sure.”

“That doesn’t make it matter less.” Yumino tucks the last of her clothes into her pack. “I knew _both_ of you needed me.”

Saskia would once have laughed to think that a human girl would say such a thing about her--much less North!--but Yumino is right. In dozens of little ways, she has helped them--and understood them, which is far rarer, and a thing Saskia has always hated admitting she needs.

***

Moving east and up into the mountains speeds the seasons, and they leave autumn behind as they travel.

No-one in the village in Essalia where North is next called has seen anyone—or anything—resembling the last of her mad cousins. Saskia returns to the inn as snow begins to fall in earnest, with all the signs she knows of a storm settling in for a long stay, to find Yumino alone in their rooms, building up the fire.

“Where’s North?”

“He’s not yet returned.”

Saskia, halfway through unbuttoning her coat, begins to re-button it.

“Where are you going?”

“To find him, of course.”

Yumino looks as if she will argue, but then says, “I’m coming with you.”

Saskia can see she will not be dissuaded. “Is _everyone_ from Tiandar as stubborn as you?”

“Yes, Miss Saskia, all of us.” She winks.

“I can hardly tell you to stay when I will not. Let us go quickly, while there is still some light.”

What light remains is pale and fading fast, and with only the vaguest idea of where North might be now, Saskia soon chances lighting their way with her own fire.

Not that there are any folk around to see them—they have all, much more prudently than herself and Yumino, Saskia thinks with a certain grim humor—taken shelter from the storm.

“The house they say is cursed is not far,” Yumino says.

In the end, it is all too easy to find him.

Saskia, her senses sharper than a human’s, scents blood before she sees it lurid on the snow, a trail from a few spattered drops at the threshold of the infected house to the pool North lies in, crumpled in a doorway.

She runs, graceless, feet sliding on the ice, and drops hard to her knees beside him. Already the action feels familiar; she has done it too many times.

“Saskia...” He blinks up at her with eyes hazed with pain. “I am sorry. It seems I broke my promise.”

“Don’t,” she says, furious tears stinging her eyes and something much worse aching in her chest. “Don’t say such stupid things!”

Yumino is a moment behind her and kneels as well, one hand over her mouth. Saskia does not want to look over and see her own fears confirmed in her expression; the calm she has always felt before in such dire straits as these has deserted her this time.

Saskia starts to reach out, but checks herself, afraid moving or touching him would only make matters worse. _It is rather different_ , _when you want the other person to live._

A thin wailing thrums through the air, making Saskia wince and Yumino cover her ears.

“The motes...” Yumino says. The house at the end of the street heaves and bulges, as if breathing.

“What are we to do?”

North is going a sickly grayish shade, but when he clasps Saskia’s hand, his grip is strong. "You must take the sword."

" _I_ must?"

"I can still help, but..." He coughs, then spits out an alarming amount of blood. Saskia can do nothing but pat at his shoulder, trying to help him stay upright. Yumino murmurs something that might be a prayer. “I cannot stay on my feet for this fight.”

“Don’t you _dare_ die.” Saskia squeezes his hand, and Yumino’s for good measure, before taking the sword and stepping into the shuddering street.

_Will it even work for me?_ she wonders, then tells herself, _Not if you think that way, it won’t._ She holds onto the sword tightly enough that her palm will be sore later where the roughly wrapped hilt scores her skin.

_I may as well try the easy way first_. She calls fire to her free hand. “Come back to the light.”

The wailing turns to a whine, which turns to singsong laughter.

“Oh, you’re going to be nasty about it.”

She sends a blast of fire at the house’s rotting façade--then, remembering what North said at the temple in the shadow village, moves her hand in the sign of the Moon Maiden.

The house cracks open like an egg, and the motes in their own shape boil out.

Saskia has time to utter a very unladylike curse before she’s lost in the fight.

She’s not alone. A strength greater than her own speeds the sword in her hand, and in the bright slashes that paint the air, she can see how to cut to undo the grip the shadow motes have on the house--can see, too, how they will strike, though later it will seem she did not so much see as feel. She cannot move as easily or gracefully as North in this, but, blow by clumsy blow, she scours the motes out, using her fire to drive them where she wishes.

They gather themselves and lash out whiplike, catching her arm a blow that makes her stagger and the fire sputter out. She dimly hears Yumino call her name, and grits her teeth against the pain. _So close..._

The sword flares more brightly, and Saskia feels the light in her, too, and it and she together reach out and sear the last motes away. As soon as they are gone and the house only wood and emptiness once more, the surge of power deserts her completely, leaving her dizzy.

She staggers back to the doorway. North’s eyes are closed, his breathing shallow.

“Saskia, you’re hurt!” Yumino says.

“I think my wrist is broken. But we must tend to him first.”

“He pushed himself too hard at the last.”

“I know. I felt it.”

“It’s nothing,” North mutters, slurring the words.

“You were already hurt!” Saskia says.

“It did not matter,” he says, almost dreamily. He shifts, opening his eyes, and tries to push himself to his feet.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” With her uninjured hand, Saskia tugs his arm over her shoulders to keep him from trying to walk unaided, and on his other side, Yumino does the same.

“I think you enjoy ordering me around.”

“Not enough to make it worth you almost dying,” Saskia snaps.

“I’ve... survived much worse than this.”

She huffs. Even when he must gasp for each breath, he is impossible.

“You’re outnumbered,” Yumino says helpfully.

“Yes. And... as I am learning, no match for your stubbornness.”

He seems to drift out of awareness again, but remains awake enough to let them guide him back to the inn.

***

The clothes on North’s left side are soaked through with blood, and when Yumino and Saskia get them off, Saskia cannot help but gasp to see the jagged line of slashes down his side, from his chest to below his waist, looking for all the world like marks of the teeth of some enormous demon. The bleeding has already slowed, but she does not at all like how pale he still looks and how his eyes keep drifting out of focus.

“Did they take a _bite_ of you?” She does not want to know, but must ask, a kind of horrified curiosity seizing her.

He shakes himself back to alertness. “I believe they had claws for a time, but perhaps that was a fancy of mine.”

“I cannot believe you make light of it.”

“What would you have me do instead?”

She sighs. “Impossible man.”

“I wondered how long it would take you to say that.”

“She’s _right_ ,” Yumino says, handing Saskia a damp cloth, then gathering her supplies and picking out a few vials.

“I didn’t disagree,” North says softly. He lets his head drop back against the headboard, his expression dazed, almost content. Saskia and Yumino exchange a look; he has never acted like this before.

He will heal no matter what they do, but doing so little makes Saskia want to scream, to fling herself to her feet and pace the small chamber. Instead she clutches the cloth and sponges blood away as gently as she can.

“I can wait,” North says. “See to Saskia first.”

“I’m about to,” Yumino says. She puts some water on the fire, and while she waits for it to boil and North drowses, she wraps Saskia’s wrist, scolding her all the while for being so reckless.

“I don’t know what else I could have done.”

“Hmph. I _hate_ it when you’re hurt. That goes for you, too, North.”

He gives a sleepy mutter that is probably agreement.

Once Saskia is bandaged to her satisfaction, Yumino makes her sit on the bed next to North, and goes to find salt, after discovering North used all of his in the fight.

Saskia is alarmed to find that he’s shivering, he who has never shown any sign of being subject to the elements, and she sweeps up blanket and sheets together and tucks them about him, then takes his hands in hers.

“You need not make such a fuss.”

“Hush. Let me concentrate. Fire is not the only way I can warm.”

She fixes all her attention on him and breathes slowly, carefully, closing her eyes after a moment the better to focus. It is much easier to create fire--fire _wants_ to burn--and something subtler to create _warmth_ , but once she slips into the right mindset, it is not so hard.

He murmurs a thanks even as she feel his shivering ease.

She doesn’t want to let go of his hands, for she is still not sure what she wishes more: to pull him closer in relief or to shake him in anger. She won’t be able to put the sight of that wound out of her mind for a long time. “Rest,” she says, as sternly as if he has tried to do otherwise. She does not want to think about how she feels now, and she most certainly doesn’t want to think about how she felt when she was all but sure he was dead in the street.

“I would promise again to be careful, but it would, I think, only make you angry.”

“You’re right. I thought you were going to die.”

“It would take much more than that to kill me.”

She only approached what she wanted to express, but she cannot find the words to say more truly what she means. “Well,” she says after a moment. “Don’t die.”

“For your sake, I shall try not to.”

She tugs his braid, not too hard. “Do not make fun! You frightened us.”

“I _am_ sorry for that. You should rest, too, or Yumino will be angry with both of us.” He slips his arms around her, and her whole treacherous body wants to sag against him, but she is not done.

“Promise instead,” she says, “not to go again into battle alone.”

“I cannot.”

“Tch. We will not let you, at any rate.”

She needs to stay close to make sure he stays warm and is truly healing, she tells herself. It is only sensible. She will decide later if how good it feels is cause for alarm.

She has never been able to observe him without being seen in return; there is a forbidden thrill in doing so. With his eyes closed, that strange, ancient light in them shielded, he looks impossibly young. In motion, in battle, he is glorious. Up close, he is no less beautiful for being less terrifying; she can see each of his eyelashes like decisive strokes of ink, and the sleepy way he smiles, eyes still closed, when she lays her hand on his forehead to check for fever.

Yet he _must_ show that maddening ability to know somehow what is in her mind and be... well, _impossible_ about it.

“What will Yumino think when she returns to see me in your arms?”

“I expect she will not be surprised at all.”

He hums a laugh, then turns more serious. “Saskia, the last time, in the darkness the motes made-- I wanted...”

Her heart hammers in her throat. “North?” She didn’t think he was capable of sounding so hesitant.

He shakes his head, hair brushing soft against her neck. Surely he can feel her heart pounding. Her lips form the _what_ of _What did you want?_ But she cannot make herself say it.

Yumino _is_ amused when she comes back, giving a shake of her head and a half-smile. She sets to finishing the poultice, pouring boiling water over the herbs she’s chosen and putting them aside to cool. North’s moment of delirium or disorientation seems to have passed. Saskia resolves to forget it, too.

“How is it that you helped me?” she asks him. “For I felt that you did.”

“I saw that you did,” Yumino says, and for a moment seems about to say something more, but does not.

“I always know where the shadow motes are... all I have to do is reach out.” His words come slowly, and his weight where he leans into her seems heavier.

“You said they’re drawn to wounds between the worlds.”

“So they are. By my will, in and through the sword, they’re cleansed.”

“Then you do _not_ have to be the one wielding it.”

“It must be me.” He frowns, turns away from the candle- and firelight, face against her shoulder so that she almost doesn’t hear him go on. “Or you.”

“Me? Why?”

But he is asleep.

He doesn’t wake when Yumino, having added the salt to her paste of herbs, puts the poultice over his wounds and secures it with muslin bandages. When she’s done, she rearranges the blankets over all of them and snuggles in with her arms about North and Saskia.

It is a long night. Saskia cannot settle into sleep, and in the wee hours she awakens to North clinging to her, his shoulders rigid. She smooths sweat-damp hair back from his forehead and whispers soothing nonsense. Yumino on his other side is holding his hand and looks as if she might cry.

“It’s the healing,” Saskia says.

“Is it always this bad?”

“No. But there is nothing we can do.”

Yumino scowls. “There has to be.”

“The power he gave me...” Saskia says, slowly, working it out. “I used it. I cannot get it back. But such links go both ways, and I would give him what strength I have to spare if I knew how.”

“So would I.”

“Maybe we can find a way.”

***

Bright sun on snow wakes Saskia, who has been so used to coming out of sleep with a jolt that at first she thinks she dreams yet.

But no--she and Yumino still hold North between them, and her hand that is not in his rests on his chest, her fingers touching Yumino’s. No nightmares again, nor even any dream she recalls.

North stirs sleepily, and to Saskia’s relief seems well when he opens his eyes.

“Let me see,” Yumino demands.

With an indulgent smile, he lifts his tunic to show that the terrifying wound is gone.

“We wish you didn’t get hurt all the time!” Yumino says.

North’s eyes are distant for a moment, his mouth tight. Then he seems to come to a decision. “There’s a reason. I am fighting a losing battle.”

“Don’t say that,” Yumino bursts out.

“ _Why_ do you say that?” Saskia says a moment behind her.

“I have felt it. The worlds are out of balance, and I am only one man. The more the shadow motes anchor themselves in this world, the harder it is for me to cleanse them.”

“A vicious cycle,” Saskia says.

He nods. “But I will fight them as long as I can.”

Yumino puts her arms around him. “We’ll fight with you.”

Saskia moves closer and leans against his shoulder. “Yes. Don’t try to stop us.”

She didn’t think she would ever see North at a loss for words. He begins to speak, stops. Tries again. “I’d be honored to face them alongside both of you. But I would not have this hunt consume either of you.”

“ _We_ would not have it consume _you_ ,” Saskia says, knowing what he will say even before he replies.

“It’s too late for that. I wish I could have known you both before... all this.”

“We like you fine the way you are. Don’t we, Saskia?”

“We really do. Even when you are impossible.”

“Always, then?” His mouth quirks. “I was once a scholar. Somewhat less impossible, perhaps.”

Saskia can imagine him thus, surrounded by scrolls, quills stuck into his braid for safe-keeping, almost certainly smudges of ink on his hands. She cannot hug this illusory North as she would like to, so she cuddles closer to the real one. “We should still like you just as well.”


	7. Chapter 7

Just as Saskia once imagined, she comes to Kallekot with Yumino and North after all.

Here, too, she sees fewer spirits than she has been used to see. Where have they gone? And, perhaps more importantly--why? Had it been just in the forest, she might have thought they gave the shadow motes an especially wide berth, but this... this is everywhere. She catches up to North.

“I know you cannot see them, but have you ever heard of spirits leaving a place the shadow motes have _not_ infected?”

“I am not sure I would have heard of it even if it happened,” he says. “But no.”

The road grows steep here, for they are hemmed in by the mountains on one side and the river Torge on the other, and he looks up at the rocky mountain face nearly overhanging the way. “And I do not like the feel of it, either.”

“What is it?” Yumino says.

North sighs, then shakes his head. “A vague feeling only. It does not feel right, here.”

When they reach Vadomisk, the first city within the borders, a boy on the corner is handing out pamphlets, and Yumino takes one, but pulls a face when she looks at it. “I can’t read Kallekotian script very well. What does it say, Saskia?”

“I cannot read it either.” She scowls in case one of them should feel sorry for her. “I am a farmer’s daughter. I was not taught to read or write.”

“Do you wish to learn?” North says.

“Yes! We could help you.”

Saskia’s embarrassment melts away. “You would do that for me? Both of you?”

“Of course!” Yumino says, and North nods.

Yumino begins her lessons right away, once they have found rooms at an inn.

“I can write my name, of course.” Saskia dips the quill and does so, finishing her surname with a flourish. “ _I_ am allowed to use ‘Pyotir’ because the imperatrix raised me to princess of the city.”

“You’re a _princess_?”

Saskia laughs to see Yumino’s awed expression. “It is only a title.”

“Whatever you say. Now, pay attention, princess.”

She writes out the Kallekotian alphabet in tidy print, then explains the sounds each letter can stand for. Saskia is quick to grasp the basics, and soon, Yumino has made a list of common words. Saskia copies them out, somewhat less neatly.

“Let me try to spell something.” Checking each sound against the alphabet, she writes out _Yumino_.

“That’s exactly right!”

Saskia beams. “And to greet someone, you would say...” She has heard Yumino and North do so in Tiandarese, and makes her best guess. “ _Neda-ba_?”

Yumino makes a face, but covers her mouth with one hand to hide it.

“What is funny? That’s how North says it.”

“Yes, but North...” Yumino breaks off into a giggle. When she composes herself, Saskia is certain she looks for a diplomatic way to phrase what she is about to say. “North is a _little_ old-fashioned.”

“How so?”

“He uses formal inflections, which almost nobody does anymore. You’d only use them _now_ if you were meeting the king, or something like that.”

Saskia smiles. “Somehow, I am not surprised.”

***

They take the quickest route toward Pyotiria, the imperial road that runs by the river, low now that its source in the mountains is freezing more day by day. Saskia feels a lingering sense of wrongness, but cannot figure out its cause until she sees a familiar sight with something missing: a water-chimney with no smoke.

“The water-demons are gone.” She gestures to the stones piled by the river.

“What are those rocks?” Yumino says.

“The legend of the water-demon’s wife is true--they do take human women for wife, though they usually need not force them. When you see stones like this, or steam above running water, it is the hearth kept by such a wife.”

“Couldn’t they just have moved somewhere else?”

“I suppose. But they are set in their ways when it comes to home-making, for all their capriciousness in other things. And I have seen no sign of them anywhere since we came into Kallekot.”

North is frowning, but at Saskia’s questioning look only gives a half-shake of his head. “There is something strange at work here. It has a flavor of the shadow motes, but something more, too.”

But not _all_ the water-demons are gone, as Saskia discovers when one calls to her from the river two days later.

“Moon daughter.” The voice is as musical as a flowing stream, but she has never been addressed thus by one of his kind.

She catches sight of him after a moment, half-concealed behind a mossy boulder, long tendrils of his green hair still in the water, moving with the current. “What is it?”

“Have you escaped, or were you not taken?”

“Taken?”

“Oh, you do not _know_.” There is the taunting note she is more used to hearing from water-demons--they have as little fondness for the children of fire as Saskia’s kin have for them.

“Know what?” Yumino says, watching him with open curiosity.

“A human?” After a moment, he shrugs. “Your business is your own. Do you not know my brothers and sisters have been captured? And they are not the only ones. The mountain streams whisper of demons of all kinds being taken.”

She knows he speaks the truth not just by his voice, but also by how her stomach feels hollow and cold, and yet she is unsurprised. When Jashree first told her of her cousins’ troubles, she sensed something worse was coming. “By whom? And to what purpose?”

“The imperatrix’s soldiers. Why, I do not know.”

North comes closer, and the water-demon’s eyes widen, but he does not retreat. “Where have they been taken?”

“Far from water.”

“Can you hide yourself-- May I have your name? I am Saskia.”

“I know who you are.” He looks at each of them in turn, sea-green eyes assessing. “Frondel. And yes, I know a haven.”

“Then keep yourself safe, Frondel, and all luck to you. I go to speak to the imperatrix now on what I believe will turn out to be the same matter.”

“Strange times, that you should speak for us.”

“Yes.”

“Go with my best wishes, Saskia.” He dives and vanishes.

Surely the imperatrix does not make war on the demons in her lands--such a betrayal would turn even human rulers against her--but what else is to be made of Jashree’s words and this confirmation?

“Why capture them?” North muses.

“Can’t we help them?” Yumino says.

“We must hope we can when we see the imperatrix.”

 _We must hope she will still see me_ , she adds privately, for she is not so certain now.

***

Perhaps a day from Pyotiria, North senses shadow motes nearby.

“We must make all haste to reach the imperatrix,” Saskia says.

“This cannot wait. You may go ahead without me if you wish.”

“You know we won’t,” Yumino says.

North looks at Saskia.

She sighs. “I know you must go. And Yumino is right. We won’t let you do it alone.”

He leads them to a place she knows well, for from its lookout wall, Pyotiria is visible as bright colors amid the greens and browns of forest and swamp.

“The Forgotten Castle,” she says. “If it had another name, it is long since lost. When I was a child, already this place was old.”

It does not look like a castle now, with much of its roof missing and only a few sharp shards of color remaining where there were once stained-glass windows. But it is old enough that the keep was built of stone and still stands, though one of the towers has toppled.

“How old _are_ you, Saskia?” Yumino asks.

“I am the same age as Pyotiria. Nearly to the day.” She glances over at North. “Not as old as you.”

“No. Not quite as old.”

“I knew you wouldn’t tell, impossible man.”

“I cannot tell what I don’t know.”

“Oh. I--”

He stops her before she can apologize. “I said I would never be angry at you for curiosity. That is still true, and goes for you both.”

“I don’t want to remind you of things you had rather forget.”

“You remind me only of things I have already forgotten.”

“Should the walls not be overgrown by now?” Yumino says.

“Yes. They should be green.” The snowsheart vine is certainly hardy enough for early winter in Kallekot, but not even stems have ventured over the stones.

“Then this is certainly the place.” North’s look takes both of them in, half resigned, half amused, and he turns toward the door. “Come on, then. I shall try to be quick.”

“You’re learning,” Yumino whispers.

Impatience to reach Pyotiria churns in Saskia’s stomach, but she reminds herself that North _did_ warn them when they first set out. It is not just of her to be annoyed with him.

Inside, the rugs have rotted--or been eaten--away, and the wind makes a mournful sound in the cavernous fireplace in the great hall. The air does not smell musty, but has a faint tang of metal that sits oddly on the back of her tongue.

“Who would’ve lived here?” Yumino says.

“The prince or princess who governed this district. This close to Pyotiria, Imperator Olefric would have given it to one of his favorites.”

“It must have been beautiful back then.” From the way Yumino looks around, Saskia is sure she imagines the castle as it once was, full of light and color and music--and, knowing Yumino, she likely sees it as brighter and more welcoming than it was in truth.

They follow North into the old kitchens, where nothing stirs at all, and he pushes a creaky door that stands ajar farther open to look into what was once the herb garden, now barren. He shakes his head and goes back to the entry hall, where he stops, lifting his head as he does when he catches a hint of the shadow motes.

“Which way?” Saskia says.

He looks meaningfully toward the stairs.

Saskia takes her cue from him and doesn’t say anything more.

As they climb higher, the air grows more and more chill, until Saskia is shivering and their breath clouds before them. North silently removes his cloak and drapes it about her shoulders, and she in turn throws half of it around Yumino.

On the top floor, deep drifts of snow are piled in the hallway. Dusk has fallen here, though it was barely noon outside.

North has a hand on the hilt of his sword, and looks back at Saskia. “Do you wish to try?”

She is not at all sure she can do this when she is _trying_ to, but she nods, and takes Yumino’s hand with the vague thought that an anchor cannot hurt. She quiets her mind the best she can, and reaches out.

Cold.

So cold.

A woman by a window, looking for one who will never return.

Her rage when she learned she was lied to--both of them were, she left to wait, he sent away believing she didn’t love him.

“Oh!” Saskia blinks, and tears spill down her cheeks. They don’t feel like her own. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees North tense, but she puts him from her mind.

“That shouldn’t have happened to you,” she says. “But you’ll find each other in the next life. Let go of your anger.” Because it worked the last time, she adds, “Come back to the light.”

The motes boil from the walls and rush toward her.

She only just has time to shield her eyes from the sunshine brightness of the sword as North steps in front of her.

“Wait!” she cries.

 _He never knew_ , she thinks, and does not know if it is her thought alone or that of the woman growing cold and bitter as she waits. But she is not yet so frozen that she cannot weep.

She doesn’t see the blow, nor even feel it at first, but she staggers backwards and Yumino catches her. There is only a great pressure until she tries to take a breath. She seems to be hearing everything from far away and through a rush of noise like a river’s rapids. The pain in her side feels like it will split her in half.

“Save her, or purge us.” The motes speak this time in a many-voiced, trembling hiss that raises gooseflesh all over her. “You cannot do both.”

“That,” North says, “is what you think.”

Darkness creeps in at the edges of Saskia’s vision. She fights it. “Wait,” she gasps again, not knowing if he will hear her, or heed her if she does.

“ _Tell him_ ,” she says to the frozen woman. “Find him again, and tell him.”

“Hold on, Saskia!”

She tries to answer Yumino, but she can’t, because she’s falling, so gently but so far, leaving the pain behind...

It blazes back with such force that she gives a strangled scream, body rigid in the grip of it, but there is something else, too.

Light, and power, flowing into her, like and unlike when she wielded North’s sword, and she is dimly aware of arms around her, a bright blaze of strength holding her up as she strains to see far enough into a world gone black and blurry. She reaches out to the woman by the window, and their hands are stars meeting in the darkness, and the oblivion that takes her is not now black but white.

***

When Saskia opens her eyes again, she is lying on a narrow cot at the end of a row, in a big room flooded with sunlight. North and Yumino sit on either side of her, each holding one of her hands.

“Saskia!” Yumino cries when she sees she’s awake, and North closes his eyes for a moment.

“I think I’m all right.”

“You were unconscious for three days,” North says. He seems strange and strained, and he grips her hand as if he is the one who needs the support. Certainly he does not look as old as she knows he must be, but, as she ha sonly once before, she feels that he _is_ old.

“What’s the matter?” she says, trying to look into his face, but the way his head is bowed, no doubt on purpose, she cannot see his expression. “Are you hurt as well?”

“No.”

Saskia does a careful inventory of her body. Her middle is well wrapped, but she feels only a distant ache, and a strange sense of disconnect, as if she is not quite anchored to the physical world. She starts to sit up, and Yumino and North both reach to steady her--luckily, for the top of her head feels as if it might take flight when she moves.

“They gave you morphine,” Yumino says. “Two of your ribs are broken.”

“And the shadow motes tried to claim you,” North says. “Why did you stop me?”

Saskia has never heard him actually sound angry before, his voice rough and stretched taut. “I knew I could reach her.”

“We could have lost you.”

“North,” Yumino says, “I _told_ you--”

He ignores her. “Don’t do that again.”

“I will if I need to!”

He does look up now, eyes blazing, but Saskia is astonished to hear a subtle shake in his voice. “I am telling you not to.”

“I will be careful when _you_ are.”

Yumino reaches over with her free hand and squeezes North’s shoulder. “You _both_ need to be less reckless.”

North looks as if he will object, but in the end only scowls. Saskia watches him with some concern, for he has never showed his emotions as openly as this.

“You saved me... both of you.” She realizes only as she says it that she felt Yumino’s strength, too, in the castle, no less bright than North’s, but grounding her, as she suspects only a human could.

“It was Yumino.”

“I just took hold of the sword--you did the rest. It’s like we talked about, Saskia. The link goes both ways.”

 _Fortunate, too, for I will admit I was foolish to make them put it to the test in such a way._ “Why are we linked?” She looks at North, but he will not meet her eyes, and seems even more ill at ease.

“It is fate.”

He knows more than that, but seems so unlike himself that Saskia can see it will not help to press him.

“I must go,” he says, but he clasps her hand more tightly.

“I tried to make him--” Yumino begins, but falls silent at a look from him.

“Wait here,” he tells Saskia, in the tone of an order, but then he adds, sounding much less certain, “Will you?”

“Of course I will; what else would I do? North, what’s--”

She stops when he rises to go, but he turns back before he reaches the door, and, as if taking each step against a wind, comes back to her bedside, and bends and presses his mouth roughly to hers.

Saskia is too surprised to do anything but feel, and she does not have time to kiss him back before he moves away and strides from the room.

She touches her lips lightly, still feeling his. “Did he just--”

“Yes,” Yumino says. She doesn’t look surprised--she might even be trying not to smile. “We _were_ very worried, but I won’t lecture you. I told him not to.”

“He’s impossible.” And more of a mystery than ever-- _why_ would he do that?

“You are, too, a little.”

Saskia laughs, then winces at a twinge in her ribs. “That is fair enough. It is lucky we have you to keep us in line.”

“It certainly takes all of my energy.” She leans over and kisses Saskia’s forehead. “But I don’t mind.”

***

Saskia heals more quickly than humans, if not so quickly as North, but the nurses still hover nearby when she walks about, as they say she must to help her heal. They grudgingly allow her to sit outside, and Yumino sits with her, making sure Saskia drinks healing tea and stays warmly wrapped up.

“What could be taking North so long?” Saskia wonders aloud on the second day.

Yumino starts to answer, but hesitates.

“What is it?”

“He didn’t want me to tell you... but he was called to fight the shadow motes not long after you were hurt.”

“And he didn’t go.”

Yumino shakes her head. “Not until you woke up.”

He has always said he _must_. What happens when he doesn’t? It certainly explains the strangeness of his manner. Had Yumino not been there, Saskia would not at all be certain she did not dream that quick, hard pressure of his mouth on hers. Why can she not seem to put it out of her mind? Perhaps it is because she cannot reconcile it with anything she knows of him.

“He could need our help, and we’re not there!”

Yumino sighs. “I told him to go when he was first called, but he wouldn’t. And he wouldn’t tell me anything, either. He just refused to leave your side. I think he loves you.”

“ _What_?”

“He wouldn’t say so, but I can tell.”

“You _asked_ him?” She can do nothing but stare, all thought swept away by surprise. What does Yumino see that Saskia does not? Until he kissed her, she never imagined North felt strongly about her at all, for he has always seemed so impassive.

_Has he, though?_

North sleepy and half delirious in her arms, saying _I wanted…_ , North daring the shadow motes to come for him in one of the maddest, bravest acts Saskia has ever seen, North who is brutal in fights, but always, _always_ gentle with the two of them.

“Oh--” It comes out high and shaky past the sudden fierce ache in her throat. “Oh, but I can’t.”

Yumino takes her hand. “Saskia, please don’t cry. I’m sorry!”

“It’s not you,” she manages to say. “It’s--” She closes her eyes and swallows hard. She has never spoken of it to anyone, the lack she feels, how long she has known she must live without love. But she looks at Yumino again and knows she must speak of it now.

“I told you I did not know I was only half human until I was sixteen. I did _not_ tell you that my mother yet lived… and of course I made my father take me to her.

“She was... mad. Not like my poor cousins, but nothing of what she said made sense. Except for one thing.

“‘You must never fall in love,’ she said. She said, ‘Love has been the death of me, and it will be the death of you.’

“And I said, ‘I understand, mama.’ It was the only thing I ever said to her.”

“Oh, that’s so sad! But… she could’ve been wrong, couldn’t she?” Yumino has always been so easy to read, her face showing everything she feels, and Saskia could weep all over again to see the hope and love bright in her eyes now.

“My dear, I wish I could believe that.” _For I should love you, and North, so very dearly if I could._ “But my kind have the gift of prophecy. I think she spoke truly.”

Yumino looks downcast only for a moment. “It’s all right, Saskia. I love both of you anyway, you know.”

Saskia knows she should not do it, but she opens her arms all the same, and Yumino slides her chair closer and nestles into them. “I do not deserve you.”

“Let me be the judge of that.” And, shyly at first, much more softly than North did, she kisses her.

 _I do_ not _deserve it,_ Saskia insists silently, but it is such a gift that she cannot refuse, and she kisses back just as softly, brushing her fingers over Yumino’s cheek.

“You might have done that, too, when I woke up.”

“It didn’t seem right to, when North only just had.” She kisses her once again now, quickly, as if simply because she can, and somehow she has lightened Saskia’s heart so that it does not ache as much at the thought that she cannot give either of them what she wishes she could.

***

They have come to know Matron Agnieszka, the head of healing, who at first tried to make Yumino leave, saying Saskia needed her rest, but relented when she saw how much they did not wish to be parted. It was only after the first day Saskia was awake that she realized other patients were moved from this ward to give them privacy, no doubt because of the paper she carries from the imperatrix.

The matron remains immovable on the matter of Saskia’s sleep, at night sending Yumino to the nurses’ quarters, which she reports are as spotless as the ward, but lively with talk and laughter. She knows all the nurses by name already, and even the names of most of their husbands and wives, children and pets.

Tonight Yumino sneaks in after lights-out and slips into Saskia’s bed, curling around her in that way that makes her feel safe and protected. _Cherished_ , she thinks drowsily, and blushes to be so sentimental.

“I’ve been thinking about how we can help North,” Yumino whispers.

Saskia blinks herself all the way awake. She has been puzzling at this dilemma too--was turning it about in her mind even as she fell asleep. “So have I. You both used his sword to send some of his power to me.” He seemed to say something of his essence went into the sword when he forged it. “I wonder--have you and I anything we have made as he did it?”

“How about your necklace?” Yumino says.

It _is_ almost a part of her. If anything would count as a talisman, it would. “Yes, I think that might work.”

“But what about me?”

“You wear that flower in your hair every day, do you not?”

Yumino touches it. “Yes. It’s the first I made. But...”

Saskia tips her head, and is surprised to see Yumino flush.

“Giving one of these flowers to someone... well, usually it would only be your husband.”

“I see...”

“But if I give this to North, I’d like to give one to you, too.”

“Would we be married, then?” Saskia teases, and Yumino giggles.

“It’s not quite the same if I make one just for you, but it _does_ mean a close bond.”

***

By the time North returns two days later, Saskia is not sure which is worse, her worry for him or her impatience to reach the imperatrix and discover what is happening.

Yumino slips from the room, not before giving Saskia a secret smile.

Saskia does not think she has ever felt this uncertain around a man before, but when North takes the seat by her bed, he looks so unwontedly nervous too that she cannot help but laugh, and all the constraint she felt disappears.

“I’m sorry,” she says at his puzzled look. “I am laughing at both of us.” She holds out her hand, and he takes it, threading their fingers together. “Will you tell me now what was wrong, before you left?”

He looks down. “If I do not go when I am called, it becomes... uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable? You mean if you try to fight the pull, it starts to hurt, don’t you?” She has had time to think about it, and does not wait for an answer; she can see the truth in his face. “How long does that take?”

“Saskia...”

“How long?” She’s not going to let him get away with avoiding _this_ question.

“Hours,” he finally admits.

“ _Hours_? You stayed with me for _three days_.”

“I wanted to be here when you woke up.” He says it as if it is the simplest thing in the world.

“Oh, _impossible_ man.” There is a wild whirl of feelings in her chest, most of which she could not name if she wanted to, but she does know she cannot bear for him to be so far away. Without a thought for her injuries--without any real thought at all, only feeling--she leans over, tugs him closer by the front of his tunic, and kisses him.

For the first half-second she fears he might not respond at all, but then he melts against her, lifting his hands to frame her face, and now that she has stopped holding back, she could far too easily get lost in this. He still smells like the smoke and cold of outside, but his hands are warm and so is his mouth. Saskia gasps in a breath--and winces at the stab of pain in her ribs.

“Saskia.” He looks gratifyingly dazed, which rather undermines his attempt to sound stern. “You must be careful.”

She takes a slower breath that goes shaky on the exhale, and smiles. “It was worth it.”

Saskia doesn’t know if Yumino was watching or listening--neither bothers her overmuch--but she peeks back in now.

North hums his laugh without turning around. “You may come back, Yumino. I discovered something on my journey, but I do not yet know what it means.”

She sits at the edge of Saskia’s bed so that the three of them form a circle, close enough to touch, and Saskia did not know until now how much she missed this feeling. “What is it?”

“I traveled into the mountains, and thought to stay in one of the villages there, but every one I passed through was empty.”

“Was it the shadow motes?” Saskia asks.

“No. I found them in only one such place, and they were no trouble to cleanse. Whatever caused the people to leave, they did not leave their homes in disarray. They may intend to return.” His eyes grow distant in that way that means he reaches out with his senses. “The villages did feel strange. I had felt something like it before, on the river road. It was as if the motes were there, but stretched very thin. Like a memory of them. They did not _call_ me, though.”

“Has that ever happened before?” Yumino says.

North shakes his head. “These last few days have shown me there is much even I have yet to understand about them. Saskia, what was it you sensed about the ghost?”

She thinks back. “I felt her anger, and her grief. She fell in love, but her parents wouldn’t allow the match. They sent him away, but told her he left of his own accord. She did not learn until much later, too late. It was so _unfair_.”

“You wept for her,” North says. “You sympathized with her.”

“But surely you’ve done that,” Yumino says.

“Yes.” He frowns. “I am not sure what the difference is.”

“Can you feel what those taken by the motes feel, as I did?”

“It used to happen, before I learned to shield myself.”

“I should have been able to.”

“You’re not weak. It is only that you have not had to learn.”

“Oh--we think you should have these.” Yumino holds Saskia’s necklace and the flower from her own hair out to North. “We think they’ll make it easier for us to help you in battle.”

“Don’t even think of arguing,” Saskia adds.

She cannot read North’s expression at first, and she realizes it is because she has never seen him this deeply moved before. In the end he says nothing, only bows his head, then puts the necklace on, tucking the stone beneath his tunic, and slips the flower carefully into a pocket.

“And I have something for you, too,” Yumino tells Saskia. The flower she has made for her is coral on top, like her own, but the lower layer is bright silver. “Because you’re a young woman of nobility.”

“But I am neither!” Saskia objects.

“You’re still young for your people. And you’ve _become_ nobility.”

“You will not let us call you ‘princess,’” North puts in, “but that doesn’t mean you’re not.”

“There are easily a hundred Kallekotian princesses.”

“And you’re one of them.” Yumino leans in and pins the flower into Saskia’s hair, behind her ear. It smells of roses.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated and revised! In the second draft, I was going to do something that ended up not working, and I needed to backtrack to remove the leadup to that.

“You _should_ stay here and rest,” Matron Agnieszka says when Saskia tells her they can delay no longer. “You three will find trouble out there no matter where you go.”

“I’ll watch over her,” Yumino says.

The matron smiles. “I know you will.”

Yumino hugs her before they go.

The imperatrix will know by now with whom Saskia travels; she has spies everywhere, though Saskia is sure none have actually followed them. Doing _something_ , even if they can travel only a few miles at a time, is better than sitting there doing nothing.

While she recovered, the world continued to change.

“Whatever is happening, it’s spreading,” she says as they make their way through the forests that cover most of her country’s center. “See here, this stream, and that one farther along.” She points. Their beds are dry, and something else looks strange, though Saskia can catch it only out of the corner of her eye. She goes closer.

There... almost a blurring at the edges, such that the bank wavers. She kneels for a closer look.

“Don’t touch it!” North calls.

Saskia pulls her hand back.

“Where is this stream’s source?”

“I’m not certain. The far north of my country. The top of the world, some say.”

North follows with his eyes her gesture toward the rising spine of the mountains, and frowns thoughtfully. But he says nothing.

There is a strange feel to the air when they reach Saskia’s city, too, one she has not before sensed. It is not entirely unexpected, after what she felt in Essalia and after they crossed the border into her country, but it is chilling all the same. That things can feel so wrong even here, where she has always felt safest, and strongest...

She looks to North to see if he feels it, too, and the faint line that means he thinks something is not right has appeared between his eyebrows.

Yumino shivers despite her new coat.

***

They are not turned away at the palace, but they do wait for the imperatrix for a long time, long enough for Saskia’s ribs to start to ache again within the stays of her court gown. They are all three far too aware of ears everywhere to feel anything but constrained, and even Yumino begins to fidget and sigh before someone comes to fetch them.

Saskia is somewhat surprised that all three of them are shown into the receiving rooms, but then she realizes the imperatrix no doubt wishes to use the chance to take the measure of North.

Saskia has always though of the imperatrix as much older than she, though the difference is only a few years, and as impervious to time. Thus it is doubly shocking to see how she has declined in the months Saskia was away, her strong voice turned querulous, her human body’s frailty revealed in how thin and wan she has grown, the sheer physical _fact_ of her that Saskia always found so undeniable now a ghost of its former forcefulness.

But only a fool would think her weak.

It would be a mistake, too, to think she would not pursue any path at all simply because it pleased her to, no matter the consequences, but Saskia can still see no reason for her to move against the demons in her kingdom--there is too much to lose, and nothing clear to gain.

She curtsies, and begins her report. “My cousins were taken by shadow motes. That is the cause of their madness. This one is expert in hunting the motes.” She gestures toward North, a long habit of caution telling her it is better that the imperatrix think him merely a mercenary, someone Saskia cares for not at all.

“And the Tiandarese girl?”

“My translator. I pursued one of my cousins to Merebah. There is one I have not yet found--she backtracked into Kallekot. But one of them gave me troubling news I wished to know more of without delay.”

The imperatrix waits, easy with silence as so many are not. Saskia knows this trick of old, but she has no reason now not to go on. “Kallekotian troops attacked my kin in the mountains, or so says my cousin Jashree, who has no reason to lie.”

The imperatrix hides her surprise well, but not perfectly. She did not know, then. “I have neither the time nor the inclination to manage every skirmish with your kind.”

“It has not been your policy to skirmish with them at all.” She dares much in saying it despite the imperatrix’s veiled admission that it was not her doing. Whose, then, is the question.

“Policies are fluid.” It sounds dismissive, but Saskia knows enough of the imperatrix’s mind to know it turns already to answer the same question. “Will that be all?”

“No,” Saskia says. “I want to see my father.”

“Very well. I trust you know the way.”

“I do.” She curtsies once more before going.

“What do you think of what she said of my kin?” she says once they are safely outside and away from the palace.

“She didn’t know they’re being kidnapped,” Yumino says, and Saskia nods, glad of the confirmation of her thought. “But she didn’t want to admit she didn’t know. I don’t think she’s decided yet if she thinks it was a good idea.”

“Who else could use Kallekotian troops to do such a thing?” North says.

“The list is short,” Saskia says. “The imperatrix will want to know who has done this, too. If I know her as I think I do, she will move to bring the matter under her control.” The sun has come out, making the snow sparkle and the buildings’ colors brighter than usual, but she can take no pleasure today in her city’s loveliness.

“You would rather deal with her than an unknown,” North says.

“ _Much_ rather.”

***

“Something’s wrong.” Yumino stops them as they walk. “I feel it.”

“What is it?” Saskia tries to sense what Yumino does, and there _is_ something, a sort of pulsing soreness in her sense of the world around her.

“I don’t know, but it’s something close by.”

“You can feel the shadow motes,” North says. “How can that be?”

“Because we’re linked,” Yumino says.

“And our connection grew stronger in the hospital,” Saskia says, and thinks her lips tingle a little at the memory.

North makes a small, thoughtful sound that tells her he is remembering as vividly as she.

Together, they track the motes through the city in the deepening dusk. They’re on the move—never too far, but difficult to pin down.

Annoyed at last, Saskia says, “Instead of trying to find what shape they wear, perhaps looking for something unusual would serve us better.”

A little later, they find her.

“Altia,” Saskia breathes.

That her cousin has been taken by shadow motes is even clearer than before—they tangle in her skirts, darken her fair hair. She stands on one of the bridges that afford a view of the imperial palace. Those humans who are still out and about give her a wide berth, and yet they do not seem truly to see her, for none stare.

North nods to Saskia, and does not even reach for his sword.

“Altia... tell me what ails you.”

If she can understand, there is still hope, but she has been in the motes’ grip for a long time. She turns to face the three of them slowly. The icy breeze tugs at her hair, blowing it into her eyes, and for a long moment, Saskia looks into their emptiness and is sure she is lost.

“You’ve come from _her_.” She speaks slowly, roughly, as if he she has not used her voice in some time.

Saskia doesn’t allow herself relief, not yet. Merely understanding her is not enough to save Altia. “No, cousin. I’ve come to help you. But you must trust me.”

Altia stares at the three of them with shadow swirling in her eyes. “You let me go, before,” she says at last.

“I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“You’re very strong,” Yumino says. “To fight the shadow motes all this time.”

Saskia holds out her hand. “I can free you.”

As slowly as she has done everything else, Altia reaches out and clasps it.

Saskia expects the pain by now--but she does not expect how sudden and strong it is, a thunderclap slamming into her. She’s barely aware of Altia’s hand still clutching hers, of North and Yumino closing in on either side to support her.

Altia’s form shudders and jolts, like a charcoal drawing crumpling.

“I’m losing her!” Saskia cries.

“We won’t let go,” North says, close beside her and far away at once.

And his strength, and Yumino’s, flow into her and through her. Altia’s wild wavering calms, and the motes flee her, like a swift stormcloud passing over the snow and vanishing.

Saskia totters, and North pulls her closer, as Yumino steps over to steady Altia.

Altia blinks away the glazed look in her eyes. “...Saskia?”

“Welcome back.”

“I think this makes twice you’ve saved me.”

“I am not keeping count.”

“I can repay you--at least a little--but we must go somewhere safe, and private.”

“We can do that,” Yumino says.

“Good. Because, cousin, someone is taking our kin, and I know who it is.”

***

Once they are safely in a small inn where Saskia is not known, Altia tells her story.

“The humans taming the wild lands that are ours by right was bad enough. But of late, they have been capturing our kind and taking them away.”

Saskia nods. “Not just us: water-demons, too.”

Altia frowns. “That I did not know. It is strange and troubling. We thought it could only be a prelude to more humans coming here, building more of the city, stealing more of our homeland.”

“I don’t think that’s their purpose now, though it has been before.”

“I fled Kallekot at first. But my anger festered. I was lost, and after you and I fought, I did the only thing I could think of: I turned back, and came here, to find the imperatrix. And slay her.”

Yumino brings tea over and sits beside Altia. “It must have been terrible to feel that way.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t free you then,” Saskia says.

“You’ve taken the madness from me now. But I thought that I could make the humans leave. I watched the imperatrix for any signs of what she was doing, but it was her son’s plot I discovered.”

“Ivadomir.” Saskia says it like a curse. He was a cruel child, and there are dark whispers of the turn that cruelty took when he grew into a man... servants never seen again, and a scandal even Saskia knows next to no details of--a broken betrothal, fractured ties with Essalia, and Ykaterin’s infant nephew named her heir over her son.

Altia nods. When he left the palace with a few soldiers late one night, I followed him into the wilds. They took those few of our kind they could find, using some means to weaken them. I know not what. But all the soldiers bore red epaulets on their uniforms.”

“His personal guard,” Saskia explains to Yumino and North. “It must be some scheme to gain power, but I don’t understand how.”

‘What if he hopes to use them the way his mother has you?” Yumino says.

Saskia must laugh at that, though it is a bitter humor. “Then he is, quite literally, playing with fire. They have no loyalties like the one that binds me.”

“Perhaps he is clearing the way for some future plot,” North says, though he does not sound wholly certain of it.

“We shall have to find out,” Saskia says.

“I wish I could tell you more,” Altia says, and Saskia squeezes her arm.

“It’s enough. We will find them. I thank you, cousin.”

***

Altia goes to send a messenger with her news to the imperatrix, that she might make what she will of it--Yumino and North agree with Saskia that they must at least give her that information. Saskia takes them to the little palace, built for the imperial children nearly a generation ago, that has been her father’s home—and cage—these last years.

Saskia’s coloring comes from her father, though the auburn of his hair is streaked with white now and his skin is ruddy from his years working in the sun. She runs to him and hugs him at once when they are let in.

“Are they treating you well, Papa?” She looks carefully at him, as she always does, for signs that they are not, but he seems healthy, and as happy as he might. She has never been certain how much he understands of the precarity of his comfort.

“Yes, sweet girl, of course.”

“These are my friends, Yumino and North.”

North bows, and Yumino gives Alexy a hug, too. “Saskia’s family is ours,” she whispers.

“Sit, sit,” he says. “Have some tea.”

They are never alone when Saskia visits him, but there have only ever been two armed guards in the past. Saskia glimpses four more in the hallway as she takes her seat. She catches North’s eye and flicks a look that way, getting a tiny nod of acknowledgment in return.

Yumino is giving Saskia’s father an edited account of their travels, leaving out most of the fights and injuries. He smiles at her fondly and sets the teacups out just so. Saskia forces herself to relax and not look toward the guards or doorways. They have even less time than she expected.

North says something in Tiandarese under his breath, and Yumino gives a short answer.

“We must have sugar,” she says, switching to Kallekotian. She gets the bowl and stands between Saskia and her father when she comes back to the table, as if to serve them. North edges closer.

Saskia sees movement outside the windows. “We must go now,” she mouths.

“These are long odds, even for us,” North whispers.

“You could get us out.”

“I have not been able to in--”

She steps closer and puts her hand on his chest, where her necklace lies hidden beneath his tunic. “Try.”

“You can do it,” Yumino says, reaching over to put her hand by Saskia’s.

North hesitates only a moment. “Hold onto me.”

The soldiers realize something is happening and begin to move in. Saskia nods reassurance to her father, and he grasps North’s sleeve.

North takes a breath, and pulls them all sidewise into chill and blur.

***

They land in a tumble on a hillside, Saskia knows not where. Somehow, North has kept her father from falling. She gets to her feet as Yumino does the same, only to have North pull both of them into a hug. She is astonished to see that he’s smiling.

“I have not been able to do that for hundreds of years. It’s because of you two that I could. Thank you.” He holds them close for another moment before stepping back.

“Thank _you_ ,” Alexy Pyotir tells North. “Where are we?”

“I... do not know exactly. I simply took us away.”

“Tiandar,” Yumino says. “Look.”

And there is the river Tian below them, just as it widens on the outskirts of Merebah.

“We’re near where we met,” Saskia says, delighted. “North, you are a wonder.”

“I know somewhere you’ll be safe,” Yumino tells Alexy.

Yumino’s mother, Darya, is a shorter, plumper version of her, and she greets all of them with hugs, even North, who bears it with good grace, though he does not return it, and starts setting out food and making tea at once.

“Miss Saskia and Mr. North! I’ve heard so much about you in Mino’s letters.”

Saskia laughs. “You don’t have to call me ‘Miss’ any more than Yumino does!”

“And ‘Mister’ sounds strange. ‘North’ is only a nickname.”

“We’ll probably have to tell you again, won’t we?” Saskia smiles at her. “I had to argue your daughter into being less formal.”

“But you’re the last people I want to be rude to.”

“They’re _family_ , Mama,” Yumino calls from the kitchen.

Darya pretends to look stern, and succeeds only about as well as Yumino ever does. “If that’s so, I will use your first names, but I get to insist you eat.”

“We accept,” North says.

Yumino helps her mother bring out far too much food for five people, and she sets a little plate of spicy honey pastries in front of Saskia, with a wink at her. “She loves to bake--we always have food to give away.”

“What’s ‘North’ a nickname for?” Darya asks.

“Northern hunter, nothing more interesting.” He looks _almost_ as if he might smile again.

“Mino didn’t tell me who you are.” The look she turns on her daughter approaches true sternness.

Yumino grins in a way that makes Saskia sure it was no accidental omission. “Sorry, Mama.”

“I want to know all about all of you, my dears, but for now, eat.” She sits on the other side of Alexy from Saskia and pours tea for him. “I suppose I mustn’t call you ‘Mr. Alexy,’ either.”

“No one ever has.”

Her father has never been one to talk much, and has been sitting quietly amid the bustle until now, simply looking about and observing. He has never left Kallekot before. _When I am sure it is safe_ , Saskia thinks, _we shall show him all the wonderful places we’ve been._

Darya and Yumino gently draw him out until he is telling them quite easily about Saskia taking such a liking to the goats he thought to raise that he couldn’t bring himself to butcher them.

“We always had plenty of cheese after that,” Saskia says.

“You named them,” her father says. “I grew fond of them, too, seeing how they were with you.”

Darya seems to have been mustering her courage, and finally she asks North, “You hunt the shadow motes?”

He nods.

“What... _are_ they?”

“Darkness ever yearns for light,” North says, “and the motes are those spirits of darkness that have learned to take all the shapes they can in imitation, beasts and men and other living things, and those things that live in ways we can’t understand, like the rocks of the mountains and the dreams of the ages of humans.”

“Is _that_ the true story?” Saskia says.

“Who can say?” He might be trying not to smile.

“That’s not what you said last time,” Yumino points out.

“No?”

“I think you simply invent a new tale every time you speak of them,” Saskia chimes in.

He’s definitely smiling now. “Who can say?”

Saskia knows they cannot take long to enjoy their escape, not when Prince Ivadomir is maneuvering for a purpose yet unknown. Whatever he wants, he must not get it.

Once everyone has eaten enough to satisfy Darya, Alexy takes her aside, and Saskia joins them.

“I would not dream of imposing on you,” he is saying, “except that Yumino said--”

She holds up a hand. “Don’t even think of it. You are very welcome here.”

***

If Saskia had not learned of necessity to sleep lightly, she might have missed it, but the sound of harsh, choked breaths from North’s side of the room is enough to wake her.

She goes over to his bed, finds him mostly by the pale grey of his shirt in the darkness. “What’s wrong?” she whispers, sitting beside him.

“A nightmare.”

“Would it help to talk about it?”

He does not reply at first, and Saskia realizes he might not want the attention--she hurried over with no thought of that, only of comforting him.

Yumino stirs in a rustle of bedclothes. “Saskia? North? Is everything all right?”

“A bad dream. I’m fine now.” He doesn’t sound fine, his voice strained, and Yumino obviously thinks so, too, for she comes over and sits on his other side.

“Here.” Saskia flicks a candle to life on the bedside table.

North does not look fine, either, though he would probably be able to fool most people. But Saskia can see in his eyes that he is still troubled, and his mouth is set in a tight line.

“I remember more and more lately, and best in dreams.” he says quietly. “I wish I did not.”

“Your home?” Yumino says.

He nods, and after a moment, he tells them.

“For a long time, we were protected by the awe and fear of humans, which made them reluctant to approach us. But then they realized we did not die, and the peace could not last.

“They wanted the secret of immortality, but none could give it to them. It is something we are, not something we have.”

Saskia does not miss that he uses the present tense.

“And so they tried to take it by force. Sometimes I dream I am still there, just as helpless as I really was.” He takes a shaky breath. He has obviously not spoken of this often--perhaps not ever--for the loss is still raw in his voice.

“The shadow motes were born then, out of my people’s fear and pain and grief. And out of mine.”

“Oh, North,” Saskia says. So that is the true story, after all this time, and why he feels he must be the one to hunt them. She could no more not embrace him than she could stop the beating of her heart, and she sees tears glittering in Yumino’s eyes as she does the same.

“You’ve blamed yourself all this time.” Now the tears slip down Yumino’s cheeks “Haven’t you, North? Because they used you to come through.”

He looks down, hiding some flare of emotion, Saskia thinks, too painful to let them see even now. “I did not yet know how to fight them.”

Saskia thought his people taught him that. “You had to learn it for yourself.” She can imagine him, and she aches to know she cannot help the young man he was, driven by grief and the same ruthlessness that will not now permit him to spare himself any pain. “You had to figure it out.”

He nods. “My studies had prepared me somewhat--as well as anything could. But it was hundreds of years before I had any skill.” He looks at Saskia and Yumino in turn, steadier now, though he cannot put on his usual calm. “I was the only one left. It _is_ me, or no one.”

Saskia holds him tighter.

“We’re so sorry,” Yumino says.

“I wish we could’ve been there for you,” Saskia says.

He looks down at his hands. “I wondered many times if it would not be easier to let the darkness take me. I do not remember what gave me the strength to go on, unless it was knowing I had no choice.”

He lifts his head, the worst of the tension gone from his face, and he puts his arms around Yumino and Saskia. His voice is still husky. “I know what gives me the strength now.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features a cameo by a really special cat I had, who was named Anyanka in real life. <3

Saskia cannot object too strongly to the detour to Ywister when North senses shadow motes there, not when he can simply take her and Yumino’s hands and step with them from Merebah to near the village of Goundre.

“Something interferes with my sense of the motes,” he says as they approach the village. “There must be a place with its own magic nearby, for good or ill.”

“Are there many magic places?” Yumino says.

“Not as many as there once were.”

“Oh...” Even the flower in her hair seems to droop.

“Magic comes and goes, and may come again. I don’t recall such a place being near this village the last time I was here. Do not be cast down, little flower.”

Moved by an impulse she does not examine too closely, Saskia reaches over to North and gives one of the stray curls that have escaped his braid an affectionate tug.

They arrived at the edge of this land, where the great river delta spills its silt and the boundaries between land and sea are uncertain and constantly shifting. Shrimpers and fishermen work the coast in their shallow boats, many still poling their way out now, in the bright early morning.

No-one in the village will tell them anything when they ask about spirits, or even about strange things happening of late. At first, Saskia thinks they simply know nothing, but word must be passed around, and by the afternoon, it is clear that the villagers’ faces are closed, and their words vague, because they are evading, not because they are unknowing.

“They’re not just afraid of something,” Yumino says, when they take rest in a tea shop where the man working is at least not openly hostile. “It’s as if they hate it, too.”

“Then why do they not tell us what is happening, that we might stop it?”

“Hatred can give a strange comfort,” North says. “It lets some have the illusion of being strong.”

“You’ve seen something like this before?” Yumino says.

He smiles, but it is bitter. “There is little I have _not_ seen before.”

It is peaceful here, the subtly floral scent of tea in the air, the tables tidy and everything clean-lined and simple. Someone has taken care to make it a refuge for those who come here.

“Can you tell where the motes are yet?” Saskia asks.

“Only that they are west of here.”

“Outsiders are not permitted near the swamp.” The shop owner has been listening. So has the little girl, about eight years old, who helped him with the tea, and who now peeks out at them from behind the curtain that separates the shop and back room. “It is a cursed place.”

North turns to look at him. “If that’s where the shadow motes are, it is where we must go.”

“Only a few know the way in, and they will not tell you, hunter.” He is an older man, with a kind face, but Saskia can see that in this, he will not bend or offer them help. “I was born in Essalia,” he offers. “The ways of the villagers were once strange to me, too. But it’s my home, now--our home.” He nods toward his daughter (or granddaughter, Saskia cannot be sure). “They say the swamp is the domain of those who did wrong in life.”

“That may be true,” North says, “but it may also be that cleansing the shadow motes will let those spirits rest.”

“Many would say they don’t deserve rest.”

Yumino makes an affronted sound.

“I’m not one who would say that. But I don’t think it’s because of hate, as you said. It’s because life is hard here, and it comforts them to think the bad are punished and the good rewarded.”

“What about you?” Yumino says.

“I’d rather think the gods give us many chances to learn what we must.”

“Me too,” Yumino says, with a vehemence that makes Saskia smile.

***

They thank the shopkeeper for the food and tea, both of which were excellent, and for the information, which was more than anyone else told them.

The little girl follows them outside, and she tugs on North’s tunic, looking up at him with wide dark eyes. “Are shadow motes the same as the dead bad people?”

He kneels down so he might look at her eye to eye. “Maybe. What is your name?”

“Sophira.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Sophira.” She giggles at his formality, but he doesn’t crack a smile. “I’m called North. Can you tell me about the dead bad people?”

“They live in the swamp. If someone was bad, that’s where the people take them.”

“The people of the village bury them there?”

She nods. “In special boats. And then the bad people have to stay, so we’re safe from them.”

“Why do the bad people have to stay?” Yumino says.

“’cause they don’t have boats, silly.”

“Mm, obviously,” North murmurs, his mouth quirking.

“And the ones who take them in to bury them are the only ones who know the way?” Saskia guesses.

“No one else is allowed. Not even to--” Her eyes fill.

“What’s the matter?” North asks.

She sniffles, but stubbornly doesn’t let the tears fall. “My cat ran away. I saw her go in there. Grandpa wouldn’t let me follow her.”

“Oh, no!” Yumino sits down and holds out her arms, and Sophira climbs into her lap and hides her face against her shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

After a little while, Sophira composes herself. “I was going to go the secret way. Some kids told me about it.”

“Would you tell us?” Yumino says.

“If the dead bad people have been taken by the shadow motes, we can make them go away,” North says.

Sophira stares at him, openmouthed. “How?”

He pats his sword.

“Oh. Magic.” Sophira nods. “Why do the shadow motes eat people?”

“Why does the wolf eat the rabbit?” North says. “It is their nature.”

“But why is it?” she persists.

He gives a hum. “Just as there is no day without night, so there is no bright thing that does not have a shadow.”

Sophira considers this and seems satisfied. “There’s a big tree that fell close to the boats. You can walk on it and get in. Can I come with you?”

“It is much too dangerous,” North says.

“We’ll look for your cat,” Yumino promises.

“She’s orange and black and white, and her name is Star.”

Yumino nods, and hugs the child once more before they go.

***

The fallen tree is as Sophira said, better suited for children to cross, but with care, Saskia and Yumino follow it. North, graceful as ever, has no trouble at all. It is slow going finding their way deeper in, picking out bits of solid ground, ducking under or around vines. The smell of salt water and decay grows overpowering.

“Do you think the ‘dead bad people’ have really been claimed by the motes?” Saskia says.

“Maybe, and maybe not.”

She raises an eyebrow. He would not say such a thing idly. “What is it?”

“I’m not yet sure.”

After a time, they come upon a massive mangrove stand, and North stops.

Spirits crowd around the trees, but they are indistinct, many almost transparent. Some make gestures that would be threatening if they were more substantial, reaching for North with spindly arms. Some simply wander about one small space, or sit in attitudes of hopelessness.

Saskia catches North’s eye, and he shakes his head, confirming what she can feel--these spirits have nothing of the shadow motes about them.

“Most of them are just lost.” Yumino’s steps are hesitant, but Saskia can see her curiosity begin to overtake her fear--curiosity, and her sweet nature, which will not let her witness suffering without trying to help. She goes closer to one of the ghostly forms.

“What happened to you?”

The figure lifts its head, as if it would speak.

A strange noise rises then, a bubbling, as of a huge cauldron, and creaking like the wood and rigging of a ship battling a storm. The stagnant water churns, green muck, rotted leaves and all tossing about on its surface, and the trees are caught in the swamp’s spasm, too, trunks and roots straining as if the very water seeks to pull them from their grip on the land.

“Don’t answer her!” It is a shriek, thin with distance, but coming closer.

She arrives with another surge of the brackish water, bringing with her the smell of dead things and cloyingly sweet flowers: a woman made of the swamp, of the mangrove trees, torso a scarred trunk, garments of tattered leaves and sticks interlaced. Her hair is rotting vines, her fingers long, bent twigs that drip water. She is made of shadows, too--the motes swirl in her eyes, all but swallowing up their sickly green.

“These souls are _mine_. I gathered them myself.”

North flexes the fingers of his sword hand. “You hold them contrary to the natural way of things.”

“They’re mine,” the swamp-demon says again. “All those who were wicked in life belong to me. And I can claim _you_ , too.”

North can move very, very quickly.

The swamp-demon’s arms whip toward him, stretching with the groan of distressed timber, and seize him far more quickly than that.

“North!” Saskia starts to lunge forward, but has the presence of mind to check herself and retreat. She curls a hand over her belt, where her silver dagger nestles.

“By what crime do you claim me?” He is as calm as ever.

The swamp-demon laughs like the coming of a hurricane. “I’ll decide after I’ve killed you.” She goes closer to him, bringing with her the reek of rotting vegetation, and peers at his face. “Oh, one of the northern tribe. I thought you were all dead. You’ll make a nice, strong addition to my souls.”

“They are not yours,” North says.

But the figures are coming forth from their hiding places, clustering near the swamp-demon as if for comfort, or hiding behind her driftwood-and-leaf-mold skirts.

“No one else wants them. I’ve given them a place to belong.”

“You hold them by fear alone. They deserve to move on to the next life.”

“You don’t have to stay with her!” Yumino cries.

Vines spring out of the water and lash around her, binding her and covering her mouth.

“Hold your tongue, you nasty little human.”

North stays still, with that superhuman patience of his, but Saskia can see his left hand is clenched and his eyes assessing, watching for his chance, even as he puts together the pieces of what is happening here.

Saskia herself is rigid with anger, but she can conclude one thing herself: the demon silenced Yumino out of fear. “Let them go! You cannot claim us. We already belong to each other.”

"Bold words."

Saskia lifts her chin and smiles. “They may be, but I do not boast.”

As she knew would happen, the demon’s vines catch her up and drag her closer. She can almost reach Yumino, but only almost.

North twists enough to reach into pocket of his tunic. When he brings his hand out, he holds sunlight at his fingertips.

The swamp-demon howls as soon as the light strikes her, and the vines and branches that hold North writhe away from it. North tucks the stone away again and draws his sword, and in the same instant, Saskia slashes with her dagger and calls fire to her other hand. Everything is too wet to burn, but the swamp-demon likes the fire even less than she does the silver, and releases Saskia with a snarled curse.

She and North move as one to cut Yumino free, and North pulls them all, with one step, back to the relative safety of the mangrove stand.

“Stay here.” Before Saskia can object, he slips back between the fabric of the worlds and attacks the swamp-demon.

It seems at first as if taking her by surprise has worked. She cringes away from the sword, fingers rattling as she lifts her hands, waters swirling about her legs like the tide going out.

But the spirits of lost souls move in and shield her from the sword’s glare, and the tide of battle turns against North.

“She draws power from them,” he calls.

“We must help him,” Saskia says.

With the swamp-demon occupied and the lost souls serving to block them and the shine of the sword’s edge from her view, she and Yumino creep as close as they dare. Saskia reaches for North, fingers splayed wide, feeling the strain of it in her shoulder, but he is still too far away to touch, too far to send their strength to help him. Already he bears scratches and welts where the branches have raked him.

“They’re afraid of the next life,” Yumino says suddenly. “They’ve been hated and feared, and they know it.” She draws herself up straight, head lifted. “It’s all right! I know you’re frightened.”

A few of the faint shapes of the souls move toward her.

“I believe in you! You can free yourselves, and find peace. You deserve it, no matter what you’ve been told.”

It is either the most foolish or the bravest thing Saskia has ever seen her do, and Yumino’s face all but glows as she holds her arms out to the spirits. “I’ll ask the gods to help you. Go-- go with my love.”

The swamp-demon screams in thwarted greed as her lost souls begin to disappear.

“Hoarder of souls,” North says, advancing on her. “Set them free.”

The demon is weakening, fingers and vines and chunks of bark blackening to shadow and falling to North’s blows. Saskia takes Yumino’s hand and closes the distance to him, catching at the back of his tunic. The sword is only a tool, she thinks, and reaches out with her mind as she did in the forgotten castle.

And North is there, his solid strength and the warm thread of his humor, and yes, they are woven together by fate. She feels how they fit, and she feels Yumino add her power to theirs, completing them with her bright spirit. Half seen, half felt, a blazing circle, of and beyond the three of them, that fills and enwraps them and flows into the sword. She shuts her eyes against the flare of light as North cleaves through the demon’s neck. The surge of power fades, but the warmth does not, and Saskia realizes North is clutching her hand and Yumino’s.

“Thank you,” he says, out of breath.

The insubstantial souls fade into nothingness all around them. Many bow to Yumino before they vanish.

North turns aside as he leads the way out, to look at the base of one of the trees, and kneels there. When he straightens, he holds a small calico cat and three kittens cradled in his tunic. _How did I ever think him cold?_ Saskia wonders.

“Aww!” Yumino takes a kitten in each hand. “She must have come in here to have her babies.”

Saskia claims the mother cat, for the third kitten is doing its best to climb North’s braid.

Once they make their way out of the swamp and back to the road, Yumino makes them stop so she can give North the salve she has brought along. His fingertips are burned where he held the glowing stone.

“What _was_ that?” Saskia says.

“A sunstone, one of only a few I still possess. My people knew how to capture the sun’s essence.”

“It must be very strong, to burn _you_ ,” Yumino says.

“Mm. There is healing tea in my future, I would wager.”

“Definitely.”

Saskia takes his arm, careful of the cat Star in her other arm, and of the kitten now perched on North’s shoulder, and he leans the slightest bit into her, which tells her more than any other sign that the fight cost him in ways they cannot see as well as those they can.

***

Sophira is so overjoyed to be reunited with Star that she dances around with Yumino, singing about how she loves her and the cats. Before long, they are choosing names for the kittens.

“For this,” the shopkeeper tells North, “you always have a place to stay in Goundre.”

“You are Javid Orkan. You were Bartolo the Fierce’s captain of the guard.” North sounds as if he realized this some time ago, and now that Saskia looks at the tea-seller more closely, she sees that his easy manner masks a quiet strength not unlike North’s. He would have needed it, for he served a difficult king long and well.

“In another life,” he says.

“I saw you once, long ago, riding to war.”

“There is always war, when men are set on it.” He shakes off the somber mood, smile returning. “But there is also always delicious food, and people to share it with. Come, let us do so.”

“I doubt the village’s tradition will change,” North says, when they have found a room and Yumino has watched him drink the healing tea. “But those taken to the swamp should be able to find their way to the next life now.”

“Good,” Yumino says from her seat near the window. “The poor things. They’re the ones who need another chance most of all.”

 _Her heart knows no fear or constraint_ , Saskia thinks, her own heart full. She leans against her.

North can be as eerily still as he is calm, but now he cannot seem to settle. He will sit for a moment, but before long, he is up again to pace.

Yumino catches him by the wrist to check his restless motion. “It’s started, hasn’t it? Lie down.”

He opens his mouth to protest, but before he can speak, she says, “As your _yahani_...”

He sits on the bed.

Saskia studies him now he’s holding still. His eyes are overbright, feverish. She has been dreading the healing to come as well, knowing it will be bad this time. The wounds they can see are bad enough, bruises already an ugly green-yellow, the marks the vines slashed across his arms and face still painful-looking, even if they no longer bleed.

“Saskia, Yumino... don’t.” He gestures as if to shoo them away, but by silent agreement, they ignore it and take their accustomed places on either side of him.

“It is hard on you, too,” North says.

Saskia does not need the reminder--that sense of being unraveled, of having to claw herself back to wholeness, is not one she is likely to forget. But how much worse it must be for him.

“It’s better if we help,” Yumino says.

“How many times must I say I won’t leave you?” Saskia says.

“I believe you. It’s only... no one else has ever stayed.”

Yumino kisses his cheek. “We’re here.”

Saskia is afraid she might hurt him more if she embraces him. Yumino has her healing powders and potions at the ready, and she also will not go too close, though Saskia can see she leans toward North as if she cannot wholly resist the urge to comfort him.

North is the one who closes the distance, reaching for both of them as the long tropical twilight turns the sky violet outside. His fingers bite harshly into Saskia’s arm, but she lets him cling. With her free hand she touches her necklace where it’s tucked beneath his shirt. Yumino lays her hand over Saskia’s.

They are inventing this as they go, but Saskia can feel the bright, thrumming power of the circle they make, how their connection runs through all of them, like a golden cord linking them together. And then it is easy to send her strength along that cord to North.

“Oh, North,” Yumino says softly, and Saskia feels her power flare and move through their circle to him--and to her, for she feels stronger, too.

“What is it?”

“Can you not see?”

Saskia focuses again on their link, and the strange kind of seeing that holds the shape of it, of them, in her mind not as an image, but as a feeling. There is a darkness around North, like a cloud about him. “Oh.” So this is the enemy he faces now. There must be something more they can do.

“Salt water,” she says in a sudden flash of inspiration. “Like in your full moon ritual. Will it help?”

He sketches a nod.

“I’ll get it.”

She takes some of Yumino’s empty medicine vials, and with her fire and the phosphorescent crustaceans of the coast to light her path, runs the whole way to the salt marshes.

When she gets back, North is huddled in Yumino arms, and she’s stroking his hair exactly the way Saskia has done--because she clearly doesn’t know what else she can do for him except hold him and be there for him.

“Any better?”

Yumino shakes her head.

“Here.” Saskia holds up the vials. “North, give me your hand.”

He sits up, eyes glazed, but does as she asks.

Saskia wets her fingertips with the sea water, and, as she watched him do, draws them across his forehead.

He flinches away, breath hissing out harshly, and Saskia snatches her hand back in alarm.

“No,” North says, sitting straight again with visible effort. “Don’t stop.”

He’s dripping with sweat, and doesn’t pull away when Yumino shifts closer to let him lean back against her, but his eyes are clear now and hard with determination. “You remember what I said before.”

 _Does it hurt?_ she asked him, and he said, _Only as much as it must_. If he can bear it, she has to. She nods. “We need to get your shirt off.”

With Yumino’s help, North sheds the tunic and undershirt.

Forcing herself not to hesitate, Saskia traces with the salt water a line across his chest, and along the inner side of each of his arms. She can hear North grit his teeth with the effort of holding still.

Like before, the touch of the water paints dark streaks on his skin. He catches Saskia’s hand as she completes her echo of his ritual and holds on tightly. Saskia feels Yumino’s bright presence reaching for her even before she takes her other hand.

Weakness takes her like before, and more than weakness, a feeling of being hollowed out, though she knows North holds back, and hears him murmur a warning or protest. But he needs her, so she does not pull away. A bead of sweat creeps down Yumino’s cheek, proof of her efforts. North’s stillness now is not that of calm but of strain, and she can feel his tension through their link. More than ever, she feels how he strives in a battle she and Yumino cannot see.

It seems a long time before the marks fade away. North slumps back against Yumino then, and Saskia keeps hold of his hand. Still pale and shaky-seeming, he nevertheless looks peaceful now.

“I promise,” he says after a bit, voice only a little hoarse, “not to say that was nothing.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter you would skip to if you were reading only the dirty parts. :)

Chapter 10

“How do you feel?” Saskia lifts the sheet and starts to reach out, but checks herself before touching North’s skin, feeling suddenly the distance between them that seemed so unimportant last night.

“You _are_ allowed to touch me.”

_You’ve slept in my arms more than once; I know that, impossible man_ , she thinks, until she realizes he does not at all mean touching him as she has done before. “And Yumino?” she says, darting a glance at her and seeing her eyes wide, but bright with amusement.

“Yumino, of course, is also allowed.”

“If you’re sure you’re healed.” She slides her hand down his chest, as if to make certain, and the hum he gives has a note of something more than humor in it.

“Yes,” Yumino says, setting her hand next to Saskia’s. “We were very worried.”

“And I am not at all convinced yet that you _are_ fully healed.”

“Hm... How will you satisfy yourself that I am?”

Saskia bends closer to murmur in his ear. “We shall think of something.”

“We need to see you, for one thing,” Yumino says. “So we can check.”

“If you must.” He pulls the sheet off as gracefully as he does everything else, casts the linens aside and settles back down as he was. He really has healed, the bruises and slashes that made it look as if he had been flogged gone with no trace but for pale lines, barely noticeable enough to be called scars. Saskia draws a fingertip along one, and North shifts almost imperceptibly beneath her touch.

Yumino glances at Saskia as if for approval, then brushes North’s hair back from where it rests curling on his shoulder, baring more of his neck.

“Good idea,” Saskia says, and tucks a lock behind his ear, then leans in and kisses the outer curve as Yumino, on the other side, nuzzles into his neck. She expected it to be difficult to draw any reactions from him, coolly composed as he always is, but she watches his fingers curl tightly into the bedclothes as she drags her mouth down to his jaw.

“Oh,” Yumino breathes, noticing the same thing.

“It’s been a long time.” His voice has already gone husky.

“Then we shall have to treat you _very_ well,” Saskia says.

“I am not so selfish as to want all your attention.”

“Oh?” How interesting. She lifts her head and looks down at him, close enough to kiss if he would lean up, but he does not. “Are you waiting for _my_ permission?”

“Of course, Saskia.”

She could almost have missed that he’s breathless. A slow smile curves her lips, for this is even more interesting. She leans closer, presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Are you sure you wish to give me that much power?”

“You may have it.” It doesn’t sound like a jest.

She must draw out the teasing given an offer like that, and she sits up, not without a twinge of regret at leaving him, and looks at Yumino, who has moved back to watch this exchange.

“What do _you_ think?”

She blushes. “I think... you and I should be closer.”

“I think so, too.” Saskia gets out of the bed and back in on the other side, kneeling beside Yumino. She has had many lovers, women as well as men, but she has never known any of them so well as she knows Yumino and North, and she has certainly never simply _liked_ any of them as much. _Have a care_ , she tells herself. _Such passions are dangerous for you._

But she looks at Yumino’s sweet hopeful face, and at North, whose beauty still strikes her with a keenness that makes her ache, and she knows she cannot resist either of them.

She reaches for the ties of Yumino’s overdress, asking with her eyes if it is all right, and Yumino nods.

Tiandarese clothing is not made with impatient lovers in mind. Saskia finds herself distracted by the heat of Yumino’s skin through the silk before she has even gotten the first layer all the way off. “Oh, I should like to kiss you.”

Yumino doesn’t wait for her, but surges forward to press her mouth to Saskia’s.

Saskia knows Yumino has never kissed anyone before, but her eagerness warms her all through, and the small noises she makes kindle a heat deeper still.

“I think,” North says when they part, watching them propped on an elbow, “you like hearing Saskia talk to you, do you not, Yumino?”

She nods, and Saskia shoots North a knowing look, sure he shall enjoy it just as much.

“Do you?” Saskia says, leaning close again just for the pleasure of seeing Yumino arch her back slightly at the feel of her breath on her neck. “You are lovely, my dear.” She nudges the overdress the rest of the way off; it whispers to the floor in a bright tumble. “I have wanted this-- wanted you.”

“I want you both,” Yumino says softly, her cheeks still flushed. “But... I want, also, to marry someday. And my husband should be the first. I wouldn’t marry anyone I didn’t want to give that to.”

“What if he’s the first man?” Saskia says.

“Oh!” The blush goes all the way down her neck, now--perhaps farther. Saskia intends to find out. “That...” Yumino laughs. “Yes, that is good.”

After Saskia undoes the first two bows on her underdress, Yumino tugs her hand away. “This is hardly fair!”

“Mm? Why not?”

“ _You’re_ still completely dressed.”

Saskia laughs. As adorable as Yumino is when she’s stammering, she much prefers her like this, even if she _does_ enjoy bossing her and North around a little too much.

“I agree completely,” North says. He gets behind Saskia and rests his hands lightly on her shoulders. “With your permission?” How he can sound brazen and genuinely curious at once is a mystery.

“Impossible man. Of course.”

He’s very gentle as he undoes the buttons of her vest, but his strength held in check behind the gentleness is as dizzying as the heat in Yumino’s eyes. He lets his head rest on her shoulder for a moment. “Will you take your hair down?” Saskia asks, struck by the thought.

“For the two of you, anything.”

But first, he takes her vest off, then her shirt, and when she shivers, Yumino moves closer. “I’ll keep you warm, Saskia.”

“You almost distracted me,” Saskia scolds, and pulls the last few ties of Yumino’s dress open.

She wears nothing beneath but simple underclothes, and yes, her neck and chest are prettily flushed. She pulls Saskia into her arms, and Saskia kisses her again, this time getting lost in the feel of skin on skin.

“We can’t ignore North,” Yumino says after a moment.

“No,” Saskia murmurs thoughtfully, kissing her way down Yumino’s neck. “But he is patient, and I have not yet had my fill of you.”

North hums in what she takes as agreement, but he has not stopped touching her; he rests his fingers lightly on the curves of her shoulder blades, purposely or not just enough to keep her aware of his presence at her back.

She slides her hand up from where it settled at Yumino’s waist and watches her face go dazed as she cups the soft warmth of her breast. She radiates heat, and Saskia dips her head to taste. Yumino clutches her shoulders, and North takes one of her hands, twining their fingers together. Saskia leans back into him. He takes a sharp breath, and she feels the tension all through him as he shifts against her, then stills himself.

Saskia teases with lips and tongue until Yumino’s nails bite into her shoulder and North’s breath is quick on the back of her neck. When she lifts her head, she finds she cannot catch her own breath.

Yumino presses even closer, and Saskia lets her hand drift down, down, over the soft warm curve of her belly, to dip into the underclothes and between her legs. She can feel her thighs trembling with the effort of kneeling up.

“Is this what you want?” she says quietly into Yumino’s ear, knowing the answer, but knowing too that she will shiver at her words as if they are touch. “For me to touch you just so? Oh, you’re burning up.”

“You’re,” Yumino gasps, “our little flame. Not me.”

“You feel like one now.” She teases at the dark curls at the apex of Yumino’s thighs, parting them softly. “Here?” she whispers. “Or inside?”

“ _Both_ ,” Yumino says, so vehemently that Saskia huffs a laugh.

“I cannot deny you, my dear.” She presses a finger into slick heat, and Yumino muffles a cry against her neck.

North says something into her hair, low enough that Saskia feels it more than hears it. All she catches are their names.

Yumino rocks against her hand, and Saskia matches her rhythm at first, then urges her faster, telling her how lovely she is, how wonderful she feels, savoring how she gives a soft cry with every breath, until she feels her reach her peak, tight and hot around her fingers. She helps her ride it out, then gently slips her hand free.

Yumino slumps onto her shoulder then, not before Saskia sees her smile, and North supports them easily. “You’re both gorgeous.”

Saskia looks back at him. “So are you, you know.” She strokes Yumino’s hair back from her face.

“Yes,” Yumino says, having recovered something of her breath, though her voice sounds rough in a way Saskia glories to hear. “And it’s your turn now.”

Still obedient, he lets Saskia push him down onto his back. She moves over so she and Yumino are on either side of him once more. His mask of composure is in place again for now, but Saskia knows they can make it slip with just a few touches. Just as she asked him to, he unplaited his hair while all her attention was on Yumino, and her fingers ache with wanting to bury them in the tumble of curls spread around him. Instead she toys with the waistband of his trousers, which are not loose enough to hide his arousal. She and Yumino reach for the drawstring at the same time.

“I suppose it’s all right if _I_ touch _him_ ,” Yumino says.

“It can be practice,” Saskia says.

North watches them with the ghost of a sardonic lift of an eyebrow, which only makes Saskia want all the more to see him gasping and needy, that calm control shattered.

He lifts his hips without being prompted when they pull the trousers down, and when Saskia eyes the simple cloth, not unlike a breechclout, that is left, he strips it off himself.

“I don’t know how to touch a man.” The smile Yumino tries to hide says she could probably figure it out for herself, but does not want to.

“I’ll show you.” Saskia traces along the jut of North’s hipbone, finding the skin there unexpectedly soft, trails her fingers over the top of his thigh and down his leg, then back up on the other side.

“If you’re Saskia,” he says, eyes half-lidded, “you tease him first.”

“Did you expect any less?” She takes a moment just to look at him--he is as beautifully made as she imagined, if a shade too thin, a little paler where the sun has not touched him than the dark olive of his arms and face, except for the shadings of deeper color at his nipples and cock.

“You’re exquisite,” Saskia murmurs.

“Beautiful,” Yumino agrees, reaching over to stroke his hip as Saskia did.

“Now watch,” Saskia says.

Some mischief has seized her such that she wants some sign or word from North before she touches him in earnest, so she strokes his chest, the inner side of his arm, down the long lean line of his thigh, and Yumino mirrors her, but North only looks sleepily satisfied.

_Impossible man_.

It’s not until Saskia stretches out beside him and scrapes her teeth down his neck that he makes any sound--and that only a hiss of breath.

“ _North_ ,” Yumino scolds, and his mouth quirks. “Tell us what you want. You aren’t as easy to read as I am.”

“Yes, tell us,” Saskia says. She trails fingertips down his chest again, as slowly as she can stand to, her touch light.

“Both of you,” he says. “Just like this. You may do as you wish with me.”

“We want to do as _you_ wish with you,” Yumino says.

“Ah, then, even my patience has limits.”

“Are you sure?” Saskia says. But she relents then, and skims the back of her hand up along the length of his cock, her breath catching when his does.

“Should I?” Yumino whispers.

“Do you want to?”

“ _Yes_.”

Saskia takes her hand, guides her to wrap her fingers around North’s length, setting her own hand on top.

He stares at their hands on him as Saskia starts to move them. “ _This_ ,” he says, low and most of the way to a growl, “is very much as I wish.”

Saskia no longer knows where to draw the line between desire and action, though she does know touching North feels more dangerous than touching Yumino. But she does as her every instinct cries out to do, and shifts her fingers enough that she feels his skin hot beneath them, runs her thumb over the tip of his cock and is rewarded by a jerk of his hips. Yumino gives an appreciative hum at that, and copies the motion, drawing a choked, wanting sound from him.

“You two,” he says, hands fisted in the sheets again, “are too much for any man.”

“I think you are a match for us,” Saskia says, stilling her and Yumino’s strokes. North starts to arch up, but checks the motion.

If he can still do that, he has far too much restraint left.

She pulls their hands away and nudges North’s knees apart, moves down between them, but when she leans in, she gets only close enough to breathe in the scent of his skin before he gasps. “Saskia, I can’t--”

He’s trembling, whether from the effort of holding back or something else, she cannot tell. She meets his eyes. “You don’t think we’ll be satisfied with pleasuring you only once, do you?”

She sees the shiver that runs through him. “Now I don’t.”

“Good.” And she takes him at once into her mouth, as deeply as she can.

He cannot keep himself from arching up this time, with a groan that sounds torn from his throat. Saskia catches the hand he stretches down to her and holds on tight, peeks up to see that Yumino has his other.

She moves and North moves with her, rocking up as she slides down. Yumino nestles beside him, exploring with her mouth all the places they stroked and teased before. Saskia can taste already musky bitterness at the tip of his cock, and it is only a few moments before he pants out something in his own language and spends in her mouth.

She is ready, and stays with him through the end of his pleasure as she did with Yumino, exultation at having given this to both of them mingling with and sharpening the insistent ache of her own need. Then she moves up and kisses his shoulder, watches the rapid rise and fall of his chest. Yumino grins at her. “I’ll definitely remember _that_ advice. But, Saskia, what did I say about you still being dressed?”

“I was... occupied.”

Yumino looks at North and winks, and he sits up and lifts Saskia as if she weighs nothing, sets her between himself and Yumino. She wriggles helpfully when they unlace her leather breeches and peel them off, and for a hushed moment, they all simply look at each other.

_How is it that they have both become so dear to me? And how is it that I_ know _they feel the same?_

“You’re the loveliest woman I’ve ever seen, Saskia,” Yumino says, and bends to kiss her, hands roaming down to her breasts. Saskia can tell she’s imitating the way she touched her before, and it is hopelessly endearing.

“Do you still wait for my word?” she asks North.

He raises an eyebrow.

“ _North_. Touch me.” She means it as a command. It sounds much more like a plea.

He fits his mouth over one of her nipples as Yumino tastes the other, and Saskia’s self-conscious laugh at being the center of their attention turns into a gasp. She finally buries one hand in North’s hair, and sets the other against Yumino’s cheek. As much as she would like to watch them, she cannot keep her eyes from closing, nor her head from falling back onto the pillows.

“You’re going to have your revenge, aren’t you?” she asks North when he lifts his head. Her skin feels so sensitive that it tingles where his hair brushes over it.

She has never seen him smile like _that_ , with a sly spark of wickedness. “Did you expect any less?”

“And you will be complicit,” she says to Yumino, who grins with something less of mischief, but moves away so they are touching only where she rests beside Saskia, hip to hip, legs barely brushing.

North skims a hand down her body in what she is sure is a deliberate echo of how she teased him, and she parts her legs when he reaches her thighs, lifts her hips to meet his touch. He barely touches her at all at first, but she feels as if his fingertips trail sparks along her nether lips as he traces them.

“Glorious,” he says.

She shivers when he dips his fingers inside her, then glides them up, achingly slowly, opening her like a flower, stopping just short of where she most wants his touch.

Yumino watches, biting her lower lip. “I want to--”

“Yes,” North says. “Give me your hand.”

He guides her fingers between Saskia’s legs, shows her how to tease at her bud until Saskia feels herself slick and aching for more, moving half-unconsciously to press up against Yumino’s fingers.

“Ah, go more slowly,” North says, almost in a whisper.

Saskia has never felt more exposed, but, far from being uncomfortable, this sense of being bared to both of them sinks into her like a tremor in her very bones, making every touch more intense.

Yumino bends and almost shyly presses a kiss to her sex, and Saskia shudders.

“That is not more slowly,” North points out.

“Oh, I couldn’t resist!”

He hums his laugh. “I see that you could not. She tastes sweet, does she not?”

“Mm, yes. Don’t you want to?”

“There is nothing I want more. But delaying your own pleasure can make it all the better in the end, you know.”

“May I... again?” Yumino asks Saskia.

“My dear, you may do anything you like.” Is that truly her voice, low and ragged?

Yumino gives a soft moan as she bends once more, and North, very gently, strokes her back, leans warm against Saskia’s knee where she has bent it up.

Yumino is more enthusiastic than refined in this, too; between that and North’s eyes gone dark as he watches her face, Saskia is dizzy with how much they want her, how much she wants both of them.

“Ah-- that is enough,” North says. Yumino sneaks one last kiss, then moves away. Saskia cannot repress a noise that sounds far too close to a whimper.

“North. Come into me.”

He at least does not hesitate now. When he moves over her, their eyes lock and the air between them grows even more charged. She leans up and whispers into his ear. “Don’t hold back.”

That is all it takes to shatter his control--with a groan, he lets her take his weight; she shivers at the feel of him hard against her, and can no longer care how needy she sounds. “We’ve waited long enough.”

“Saskia--” He sounds as close to falling apart as she feels.

She cries out softly when he enters her, and Yumino catches and clasps the hand she flings out, seeking some way to anchor herself.

Then North kisses her, and nothing could possibly keep her from being swept away.

He frames her face with both hands, thumbs moving softly over her cheekbones, fingers brushing her ears, her hair. He gives her quick little kisses that are light but not at all hesitant, breath hot against her lips, until she gives a half-growl and tugs his hair to make him finally take her mouth fully. They’re moving together by the time he pulls back, and she cannot tell which of them is shaking, or if they both are.

“You needn’t be so gentle.”

“By the gods, Saskia, you will drive me mad...” He moves into her hard, and she almost does not hear him add, “...and I will savor it.”

She has just enough presence of mind to take in Yumino’s wide eyes, and her blush even deeper than when she first began to touch her, and she untangles their fingers, reaches down almost clumsily. “Let me...”

Yumino makes a little incoherent sound and moves closer so Saskia can more easily stroke her sex. North groans and pulls Saskia closer still. He shudders into her as Yumino cries out, and hearing, feeling both of them is what pushes Saskia over the edge; her pleasure takes her with such force that light spangles the inside of her eyelids.

While North still lies gasping against her shoulder, she pulls Yumino in close to them, kisses her hair when she nestles into the curve of her neck. They reach for each other without needing to look, linking their hands across Saskia’s waist. She would, she thinks, be perfectly happy to stay like this forever.

***

“It’s a good thing you crossed over from Essalia. They say there could be war soon.”

“Who says that?” North says.

The innkeeper shrugs. “People.”

They are in the north of Kallekot, taking a night’s rest before going the rest of the way to the abandoned villages North found. Saskia claimed the table nearest the fire, thinking already of the cold they will face. _War between Kallekot and Essalia?_ _Such a thing would’ve been unheard of only a little while ago._ She was not yet born the last time the two countries warred.

“Essalia’s never been content with the western border,” a woman from a nearby table chimes in. “They still think the western reaches of the Narwes should be theirs.”

“That may be,” Saskia says, “but they have never before shown any inclination to do anything about it.”

“They do now.” The innkeeper gestures toward a stack of pamphlets on the bar, very like to the one Yumino found not long ago. Saskia takes one and studies it. Luckily, it is in print instead of script, but it still takes her some moments to read it.

“It says all patriotic Kallekotians must be alert to the Essalian danger.” She looks up and sees North’s face has gone stormy.

“What is it?” Yumino asks him.

“The darkness in the world spreads. Humans can feel it, though they do not know what it is.”

“Things like this will happen more?” Yumino says. “Like old wounds reopening? And people seem unhappier, too...”

North nods. “Old conflicts will resurface, and in a thousand small ways, the choices people make will be driven by fear or hate. And the little things ruled by chance will go wrong more and more often.”

“You have seen this before?” Saskia says.

“No. But I can predict what will happen.”

Saskia sees Yumino is as concerned as she. If this had happened before, they would know the world survived it and healed, and North might at least know something they could do to make sure it survives this time. But this is uncharted territory, and they must be the ones to find safe passage through it, for everyone’s sake.

***

They step into a remote Kallekotian landscape so changed from when Saskia last saw it that she gasps in dismay. Where she has been used to see snowdrifts piled higher than she is tall, looking like sugar confections, now the land is barren and brown. Saskia does not need to see how North’s eyes widen in alarm to know to go no closer. She had thought they left the worst behind in the swamp-demon’s mangroves.

As she looks around, taking in more of the sight, her heart twists to see the decay of her land. Whole copses of trees stand spindly and black, blighted and crumbling. Even at this distance from the danger, a chill slithers up her spine and tries to hold her in its grip. She goes quickly to Yumino’s side.

Despite everything, she still loves this land, loves the wildness of these mountains, the ordered neatness of her city and its bright buildings flashes of color all about her when she walks its streets. Even the evil she has been forced to do in its name cannot dim that love.

Yumino has seen only the foothills of the Narwes before, and is in awe at the highest peaks, nearly always wreathed in clouds and bare of any vegetation. They rise covered in snow, now, except for the very steepest.

“I always heard that the gods once made their homes there,” Saskia says, seeing her gaze up at them. And others not unlike them.” She glances at North, for surely the top of the world cannot be very different from here, where the wind can grow sharp enough to steal one’s breath, and the purity of the air, before the shadow descended, made all the colors blaze.

“The gods were gone from this world before my people came.” He looks out at the distant peaks with a faint sad smile. “But this is not so unlike my home.”

“It’s stunning,” Yumino says.

It is also _freezing_. Very soon they reach one of the abandoned villages North found before. It’s as he said--the doors to the houses are neatly closed, and when Saskia peeks in one of the windows, she sees dishes, a shawl draped over the back of a chair, all the small objects of daily life, left as if their owners have only just stepped away.

“Do you feel the shadow motes at all?” Yumino says.

“Very faintly. They were not the cause of this.”

It is true that this village does not make Saskia’s skin crawl as the one taken by the motes did, but neither does it feel as peaceful as that other did once North cleansed it. “I don’t like this.”

“Neither do I,” North says. “But I could not put a name to why.”

“It just feels off,” Yumino says. “But our little flame needs to warm up.”

Saskia protests stopping on her account, but her shivering means she is not very convincing. They go into a tavern and build a fire, and Yumino finds some bread and toasts it. She puts her cloak over herself and Saskia and snuggles up to her.

North remains quiet and thoughtful, watching the fire; Saskia thinks he has the look of one worrying at a problem that refuses to untangle. He does not speak of it until after they set out again.

“Before the last time I was here, I never felt the presence of the shadow motes without also feeling called to them. But this--it’s as if they have left a stain behind that is like them, but is _not_ them.”

“What could cause that?” Saskia says.

“I do not know, and I hate not knowing.” He walks some way ahead, and when he comes back, his frown has become a scowl. “Whatever it is, it’s stronger this way.”

Following his sense, they begin to see the familiar signs of infection everywhere--black and twisted trees, rocks that look as if bites have been taken out of them, bare and barren patches where not even snow has stayed. A shadow cast by nothing in this world covers the ground in other places, gouges clawed out of the earth by great talons, and Saskia realizes she sees now the emptiness that marks scars between the worlds.

North grows more and more grim. “There is no one place where they are. This should not be.”

“What’s that?” Yumino says, pointing to a building in the distance.

“I know of no settlement here,” Saskia says.

It is a plain one-level structure, sitting awkwardly in the landscape as if simply dropped there with no care for how it looks.

When they reach it, they find a large, empty front room. The wood, raw and unpainted, still smells freshly cut, but it is only a disconcerting contrast to the sense of wrongness that is far stronger here than it was in the village. Saskia realizes she can also smell the faint hint of ozone and metal that the shadow motes leave behind.

A door from the front room leads into a dark one where their steps echo. Saskia calls fire to her hand, and stares about in dismay at what it reveals.

The rear wall is lined with cages, all empty now, but the echo of fear lingers in the air. A few tools of unclear use are scattered about, as if the people here left quickly and did not consider them important enough to stop for. Saskia picks one up to take a closer look and must drop it with a cry, for it is searing hot to her touch.

“What is it?” Yumino says.

Saskia looks at her reddened fingers. “Iron. Demons cannot bear its touch.” Now that she knows to look for it, she can tell the cages are made of the same.

Yumino looks stricken. “Poor demons!”

“The motes must have claimed some of them,” North says. “I can still feel traces of them.”

Saskia asks what they’re all thinking. “But where are they now?”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have an early update, since it's been a couple of weeks since I posted anything new!

North takes them back to the empty village, which seems more sinister now that Saskia is sure the people were moved so the demons could be imprisoned--and whatever was done to them could be done--in secrecy.

In silent understanding, they all climb into the same bed in the village inn, Yumino in the middle, holding Saskia and North close. In the darkest, coldest hour of the night, North jolts out of sleep violently enough that Saskia and Yumino wake as well. He is wrapped against the cold and armed by the time Saskia tumbles blinking and shivering from the bed.

“The motes?” she says.

He nods. “Dress as warmly as you can. I have--”

The wind comes shrieking down from the mountains, rattling the windows and making the fire jump and shudder in the hearth, and he goes very still. “A bad feeling about this,” he finishes.

Yumino and Saskia bundle up as quickly as they can.

“You have a guess about what this is, don’t you?” Yumino says.

“I hope I am wrong. There is a demon I have encountered before. If the motes have infected it...” He looks at each of them in turn. “It will be very bad. It’s called ‘the cold that burns.’ It is very old, and quite clever.”

“But you’re older,” Yumino says, “and cleverer.”

“Mm. I am older.”

“I hope,” Saskia says, “you’re not even thinking of leaving behind a healer and one who can wield fire.”

His mouth quirks. “I am far too afraid of what you two will do to me if I try.”

He draws his sword, and Yumino stuffs her pockets with twists of oiled paper they filled with salt earlier. Even with no sign of a demon, the cold outside bites. Their footsteps crunch through the crust of ice atop the snow. That is the only sound, but the silence feels heavy, and Saskia catches a faint scent of metal.

North holds up a hand. “I think it will come to us.”

It does, in a blast of frigid air and a whirlwind of stinging snow. Saskia can almost see shapes in the swirling ice and snow--the barest suggestion of a long, bearded face--but it could be a trick of light and shadow. The laughter is definitely no illusion.

“We meet again, hunter.” It is not the voice of the shadow motes, though there is a trembling undercurrent to it that speaks of them, and the snow that spins in a slow maelstrom before them now is threaded through with wisps of darkness.

North lifts his sword. “I cannot let you go on your way this time.”

The snow shapes itself into a sword, too (mockingly, Saskia thinks), and swings for him. He parries, though the blow drives him several steps back.

Yumino nods to Saskia. She flings several of the salt papers toward the demon, and Saskia lights them on fire in the air. The demon shrieks when they hit, and North staggers under renewed pressure, the sleeve of his tunic beginning to crust over with ice where the snow engulfs it.

“There are too many of us for you this time,” the motes hiss in their own voice.

North takes a quick step back to gain room to maneuver, and just as quickly slashes hard against the cloud of snow.

The demon whines a note that makes Saskia’s teeth hurt. The cloud dissipates, only to reform and drive toward Yumino and Saskia, who are almost out of ammunition.

“No!”

How North gets ahead of it, Saskia will never know, but he takes the brunt of the attack, nearly falling under its force.

“They _dare_.” The murmur of the motes is gone from the demon’s deep voice. “Foul little creatures...” North lands a blow, the memory of sunlight flaring bright from the sword.

“Infesting _my_ territory, like the others...” The words dissolve back into a thin discordant hiss.

Saskia knows the demon is not beyond reach--it still speaks, and understands, and fights the hold the motes have on it. _But how am I to help it, when I cannot lay my hands upon it?_

_I shall have to do it any way I can._

“Yumino, get back,” she whispers.

She calls fire, steps forward, and, ignoring North’s cry, plunges her hands into the cloud.

It _does_ burn, searing and freezing to her very bones. She grits her teeth. “We can help. I know--” She drags in a breath nearly as painful as the burning in her fingers. “I know what it is to lose your home. Come back to the light.”

Lightning flashes green.

At the crack of the thunder, the shadow motes burst from the snowcloud into the sky, and disappear.

“Saskia!” North catches her up in his arms at once, covering her hands with his.

“I’m all right.”

The demon regards them from a white swirl, its long face clearer now. “My thanks, half-demon, hunter, human.”

“You should apologize to Saskia,” Yumino says.

Ice-white eyes widen, but the demon chuckles and seems to tip its head. “My apologies for the hurt those vile things made me cause you. Both of you.”

Yumino nods in return. “Who’s invaded your territory?”

“Humans and demons and darkness, more darkness every day. They have no right to come there. Those are my favorite hunting grounds.” If Saskia could imagine a being this old and powerful sulking, she would certainly think the demon sulked now.

“More darkness,” North says. It’s not a question.

“It grows. In the ice caverns.”

“I know of them.” Saskia has never seen North look afraid before. Yumino moves closer and puts her hand on his arm, and he schools his expression back to blankness. “You have _my_ thanks for the information,” he says.

“Use it wisely.” The demon spirals up into the sky.

“I know what they’re doing.” North’s eyes are bleak. “They’re creating shadow motes.”

In the silence that follows, even the wind makes no cry.

Saskia finds her voice first. “ _How_?”

“That I do not know. I could venture a guess or two--but it would be guesswork only. And I hope I am wrong.”

“North... we need to know,” Yumino says.

He gives Saskia a look that might be warning or might be sympathy. “Very well. But there’s no need to stand in the cold for the telling.”

***

“As I have said, shadow motes are drawn to wounds between the worlds. There are many ways such wounds can happen, but one the motes seem to love above all others is the death of hope.” There is a distant look in his eyes, as there often is when he speaks of such things. Memory, Saskia thinks, old, but still painful.

Yumino is readying the healing tea, though North insisted he doesn’t need it--clearly he has smelled it, too.

“It is easy enough to see that anger and pain go far in the killing of hope. I believe the prince is using this knowledge to turn the demons.”

Saskia’s hands go to her mouth. She can imagine it all too well.

Yumino, too, looks stunned. “How can he be so cruel?”

Saskia does not need to think about that question. “His mother disinherited him. He has always enjoyed the suffering of others, and he has tried to hide what he is, but I think she knows. If he can create shadow motes at will, there is no limit to the chaos he can cause--and he could use it to his advantage.”

“It will not work the way he hopes,” North says, with a grim kind of satisfaction.

“No, but he is arrogant enough to think it will.”

The water Yumino has put on begins to boil, and she turns her attention to the tea, still frowning. But by the time she has arranged everything on the tray, she is nearly her normal cheerful self again.

“You must _not_ add milk or sugar to the healing tisane. Not only will it make it less effective, it is the same as saying your _yahani_ cannot brew appetizing tea.”

Yumino may be the only person in the world who would give an etiquette lesson even as she tends to wounds. Saskia takes solace in the ordinary comfort of her scolding--they all need it, after such revelations.

She is grown somewhat more accepting of the fact that even when North is badly hurt, he is (infuriatingly) correct when he says he will be better by the morning. This does not mean she has to like it, and Yumino is clearly of the same opinion.

“Let me help you with that.”

“You’re hurt as well!” Yumino stops short of shaking a finger at Saskia, but her tone is enough to make her obediently sit back down. She catches North’s eye, and he keeps his faintly amused silence, but raises an eyebrow at her, as if to say she should have known better.

“I don’t want to hear it from you,” she tells him.

He should not be so good at feigning innocence.

 _The cold that burns_ , he called the infected demon, and his arm does look burned, angry red from fingertips to shoulder even now. Saskia is exhausted, and she does not know how Yumino is not swaying from fatigue, but she makes Saskia and North sit down on the overstuffed bed.

“You’re still shivering,” she tells Saskia, and pulls the blankets up from where Saskia has let them fall and tucks them, possibly more firmly than necessary, about her shoulders, before turning her suspicious look on North.

“I do not feel the cold as humans do,” he says, and with a glance at Saskia, adds, “and I certainly do not feel it as much as our little flame.”

Yumino smiles at that, and Saskia mostly succeeds in not doing so.

North, with only a token objection, lets Yumino put salve on his arm and wrap it in bandages. Saskia knows better than to protest and simply holds out her hands when it is her turn, though she does wrinkle her nose at the spicy green smell.

Yumino brings the tea tray over and sits between Saskia and North, presumably the better to supervise their behavior. North takes his cup after only a stern look from Yumino, but not without protest. “I _will_ be better--”

“By the morning,” Saskia and Yumino say together.

“But you aren’t better now,” Yumino finishes. “Nor are you,” she tells Saskia.

Saskia can barely get the cup past her nose, but gamely sips the tea. It is not _just_ bitter, though it is certainly bitter enough to make tears spring to her eyes--it also makes her flush as quickly as do spirits or wine. Even North has two spots of high color on his cheeks, though he hides his distaste better than Saskia.

“I hate to be so very insulting... but this is _not_ appetizing tea.”

“Hmph, I know. Drink it anyway, little flame.”

Saskia does.

Yumino watches them both until they have finished their cups, then puts tray and tea on the floor and loops an arm around each of them. “Now--” She is stopped by a jaw-cracking yawn she must have been holding back for some time. “Now rest.”

Saskia puts her head on Yumino’s shoulder, and North saying, “Only if you do as well” is the last thing she hears before she is asleep.

***

It is even colder in the morning when North takes them east, almost as far as the ice caverns.

Saskia breathes in the sharp freezing air of her country’s high places. It at least is not changed--yet--but the snowy foothills, which should be pristine white, are streaked with the ominous gaping shadows that by now are too familiar.

Snow tumbles to the ground from a nearby branch, loud enough in the still air that Yumino startles and crowds closer to Saskia.

“We cannot get too close,” North says as they make their way toward the plain beyond which the caverns rise. “Nor can we stay long.”

There is no cover along the way save what little the bare, spindly trees can provide, and though Saskia knows they would see anyone who could see them, the back of her neck prickles as if eyes watch her all the same. She catches a scent she does not expect--fresh-turned earth--and, concentrating, follows it. “Something strange is happening here.”

“Saskia,” North calls in warning. “Don’t stray too far.”

“I won’t. I only wondered--“

The soldiers do not step from the air as North does when he travels; they are not there, and then they are. All wear the uniform of Prince Ivadomir’s personal guard.

Saskia tears the bandages from her hands and calls fire, but she is slow, too slow, and the soldiers were in position before they revealed themselves.

A slight form stands with head bowed among them: a sylph, chained with links of clay. That, then, is how they went unseen. Saskia throws a tongue of flame toward her to try to shatter the bonds, but cannot see if she succeeds, for she is surrounded by then and must pull the fire back in defense.

Yumino and North are still together, at least, she with Saskia’s dagger and he with his sword drawn, back to back and both fighting hard; the sword is a blur, but against these foes, only a sword.

“Take the fire witch and the hunter,” someone orders. “Kill the girl.”

Watching Yumino die is simply not acceptable. Neither does Saskia want to imagine what they might do to North--they must know something of his powers, or they would not want him. He would die, too, before he would let anyone use him for evil such as what they are working here.

Saskia spins, sending fire flaring out in great arcs about her. She cannot maintain it long, but she can draw more soldiers to her and buy Yumino and North time. One of the prince’s men, quicker than the others, makes a grab for her arm and twists it painfully, but her gambit works: some of the men rush over to replace their fallen comrades. “Go!” she screams.

North has hold of Yumino with one hand and is still fighting, teeth bared in a desperate snarl. “Not without you!”

“They want me alive. _Go_ , damn it!” She calls fire to wreath her arm, and it comes slower and weaker now. She wrenches free when the soldier’s grip breaks, and flings a last gout of flame to drive the prince’s men back from Yumino and North.

The last thing she sees as he pulls them away is her struggling and the pain stark in his eyes.


	12. Chapter 12

The soldiers bind Saskia’s wrists with iron manacles, and she endures the march to the military base and everything after through a haze of pain bad enough that she cannot become accustomed to it. She did not free the sylph after all; one of the men tugs her along roughly by her chains. She does not look at Saskia.

She has never actually been inside the caves before. The ice is so thick and deep that it’s green and blue in places. She tries to shift North’s cloak more tightly about herself so the soldiers will not see her shiver.

There is a wooden building near the caves, bigger than the other, but with the same raw and hastily constructed look to it. The metallic, electric smell of the shadow motes, usually so subtle it is only a suggestion of scent, is thick as fog here.

“My mother should have had you killed,” the prince says. “But perhaps this will be a better use of you after all.”

The soldiers do not take her to the building, but into the caves, where they take North’s cloak from her and lock her in a cell hollowed into the ice.

Prince Ivadomir cannot seem to resist taunting the captives. Perhaps he thinks it will speed their claiming by the shadow motes, and perhaps he is right. Certainly Saskia must fight hard to keep his words from worming their way into her thoughts, already dark enough, and taking poisonous root there.

“Your lover can’t save you,” he tells her, she knows not when. “If he tries, we’ll get him, too.”

 _Both of them will save me_ , she thinks.

“The gods will not allow this,” she says, but it is only a wish, for no one knows what they will do. They have allowed so much that is wrong already.

“Then let them come. Let them try to stop me. I know they won’t. The gods left this world a long time ago,” the prince says. Saskia does not recall him approaching the bars of her cell. “It’s time for demons to do the same. But you’ll serve me as you go--me, and Kallekot. How can you object? You’ve worked for Kallekot’s glory all your life.”

“I have killed,” Saskia says through her teeth, “because your mother gave me no choice.”

“You’ll see. When the other countries fall into chaos, Kallekot will step in, and I’ll have the empire my sainted mother was too weak to conquer for herself.”

“Your mother is stronger than you will ever be.” Saskia’s feelings about the imperatrix have never been uncomplicated, but she does know she keeps her word. “She is strong enough that she feels no need to boast.”

The prince slams his hands against the bars, making Saskia jump, but he can do no more, and they both know it.

But she quickly loses track of the days, and pressing at the front of her mind, all the time, are the cold and the hunger, and the shackles like burning brands about her wrists. She cannot retreat to thoughts of Yumino and North, and the thoughts of home that have always soothed her are fraught and treacherous now. Even the memory of Pyotiria carries more pain than love, it seems, for will she ever see it again? And what foul secrets does it hide, beneath its bright colors and loveliness?

She cannot feel anything but her own misery, and can hear little but the suffering of those around her. She guesses her kin are also in these ice cells. Some, from the sound of it, have been here a long time, surely before the hasty relocation of the other site. Silence in one cell gives way to begging for freedom, which turns to hisses of hatred and oaths of revenge, and after a day or so more, only the chattering cold sibilance of the shadow motes sounds from down the passageway.

 _Yumino and North would never leave me here._ That thought is all she can cling to, shivering and aching and fighting tears.

She sees one night how she could work a pin out of the manacles to release the catch, but it is hard to turn. Before long her fingertips are burned because she cannot stop worrying at it, but the pain forces her to let go each time before she can make any real progress.

She plucks at it again and her hand jerks away of its own accord. She gives a frustrated cry she cannot repress even for her pride’s sake... and it turns into a stifled moan of distress.

On the back of her hand, the telltale shadow spreads like spilled ink soaking into parchment.

***

Saskia cannot bear the sight of the shadows swirling beneath her skin, but neither can she look away; they transfix her with helpless, horrified fascination. Never still, the motes lick up her fingers like little dark flames, circle her wrists beneath the manacles in patterns that are almost beautiful.

 _I am still myself_ , she thinks.

 _But will I know it when I am not?_ Has the madness that lets the shadow motes in always been as close as this? She thinks of her cousins, her mother. She thinks, _Yes. It has, and it seems I always knew it, deep down. It is why I cannot love anyone, and it is why my conscience has not driven me mad after all I have done. A rot like the motes has lived in me all along._

 _We understand you_ , they whisper to her. _Haven’t you always felt you’re caught between two worlds? Like you’ll never really fit into either? We feel that, too. We always feel it._

The swirls of shadow climb her arms, wrapping pale skin like lace, like... something she has seen before. But what? She cannot remember.

They are not wrong about her. Why should she fight them?

She loses track of time again, head reeling with nausea, the shackles still rings of pain she cannot ignore.

She thinks she must be imagining it at first, but the sound of running water grows louder and louder, and Saskia watches as the rear wall of the cell begins to flow, then melts away, letting in the almost blinding light of sun on snow.

“Come out, little cousin,” Jashree calls.

She no sooner steps outside than Yumino and North are there, and she stumbles backward, lifting her arms so they can see the darkness curling about them; she hears Yumino gasp. “Don’t touch me!”

North ignores her, pulls the irons open as if they are nothing. Saskia tries to move back, but relief and weakness sweep over her and she slumps forward against him instead, the cold air on her arms and face easing some of her dizziness.

“North, you have to...” She swallows. “You have to cleanse me before they take me over. You promised.”

Her takes her hands in his and kisses them. “I can’t. And you are not lost.”

“No one can help me! You must do it. I can’t bear for you to see what I will become.”

“We’ll never give up on you,” Yumino says.

“Never,” North echoes.

She tries again to pull away, but he will not let her go, and she fights for every inch of control, but fire creeps over her fingers, down her arms, as inexorably as the shadows did, and North must release her then.

 _The prince hurt you_ , the motes whisper to her, a cold thread snaking through her mind. _He hurt your kin. Let us help you get revenge_.

She can see it. They would kill him. But first they would make him suffer like she did, like her cousins did. She wants, with all her heart, to see that happen.

“Let me kill the prince. Don’t get in my way. _Please_ don’t.” She will fight them if they try. She knows she will.

“You can’t,” Yumino says.

“He has to answer for what he’s done.”

“He will, with his death.” The fire blazes from her hands, woven through with shadow. Ivadomir will be sorry he taunted her, too.

North draws his sword at last.

He hands it to Yumino.

Saskia must banish the fire to shield her eyes from the burning shine of its edge, brighter than ever before. Yumino grabs her hand when she does, and North wraps his arms around her from behind, pinning hers to her sides. Yumino’s grasp sears like the iron did. Saskia struggles, but they have her too securely.

“Saskia,” Yumino whispers, tears in her eyes, “we love you. Come back to the light.” She wears the moonfire stone necklace, which seems, to Saskia’s sickened eyes, to glow.

 _We can make you stronger,_ the motes whisper to her.

Yes, stronger, with shadow and flame coursing through her, at her command. They show her such pretty pictures. The prince begging for his life. Her refusal, and him burning... this whole cursed place scorched, so even its memory is obliterated.

She can love no one, and Yumino and North cannot love her, no matter what they say--who could, after all she has done, knowing all that she is?

 _We don’t know love, either_ , the motes whisper. _No one loves us, either. But power is better... It makes the pain matter less. Let us give you ours._

 _Yes_ , Saskia tells them. _Yes, I want it._

It burns through her, scouring the fear and pain away, leaving only the hot weight of her rage like a stone at her center, but she can bear its ache, for it will free her.

_Don’t fear what you are. Embrace it._

A wave of power explodes out of her. She’s dimly aware of Yumino’s cry, but the burst flings her free and she runs, barely knowing where she goes except that she must find Ivadomir, must not let him get away.

North is in front of her before she reaches the wooden building--she nearly collides with him, and he catches her arms again. But now he holds a sunstone tight against her bare skin, and she feels the power, the delicious power, begin to drain from her.

“No!”

“Saskia,” he says, as gently as she has ever heard him speak, but it only makes her struggle harder. “I’m sorry.”

He pulls her backwards with him, and while she is still dizzy, Yumino sets a hand against her cheek. “Come back to us.”

The white-hot pain where Yumino touches her flares through her like sheet lightning. “Let me _go_!”

For a moment that seems an eternity, lightning throbs along every nerve ending, and she cries out, hates how weak she sounds. Then she feels the soft warmth that is Yumino, reaching out to her, lending her strength, and the fiercer blaze that is North. They’re still here--she fought them and they’re still trying to save her. All she has to do is meet them halfway.

 _You’re wrong_ , she tells the motes. _I do know love._

And the pain is gone, leaving her trembling with aftershock.

“We’re here,” North says into her hair. “We would never leave you.”

Yumino moves closer and hugs both of them. “We’re so sorry you had to wait. We needed to get some help.”

“I tried to fight the motes... but I was no match for them.” The darkness has left her, for now. She thinks it only waits for another chance to break loose and claim her again.

“You were kidnapped and tortured with the sole aim of making them take you.” North’s voice is tight with anger. “And you were still fighting them. I could have done no better, little flame.”

“Can’t you see?” Yumino says. “It’s the light in you that frees people from the shadow motes. All I did was show it to you.”

Saskia holds her tight. Can it be true? _They_ both believe it. “But if _you_ did not shine so brightly, my dear, you could not have freed me. Did I hurt you?”

“Not badly.” She moves back and holds up her hand, palm faintly red.

“North?”

He shakes his head.

“I am so sorry.” It is not the time, but she must say this much. “The motes were... terribly persuasive.”

“I know,” North says, so quietly she would not have heard him were she not so close.

“They’re so _sad_ ,” Yumino says. The far-away look in her eyes is alarming.

“Who? The motes?”

She shakes herself and is present once more. “Yes.”

 _Sad?_ They have never felt that way to Saskia. _Oh, Yumino, you are far too tender-hearted._

“Saskia, let me take you to safety,” North says.

“ _No_. I can fight.” She puts her hand on North’s arm and pushes herself upright, and feels stronger. “I won’t kill the prince. Unless I must.” There is already enough blood on her hands; she will not add to it for the likes of him--no matter how much she would still like to see him beg her for his life.

The cloud of snow crystals that is the ice demon sweeps past, calling something in his voice like a deep cold bell.

“My cousin in the cell beside mine--what became of her?”

Yumino shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Saskia, but I don’t know.”

“The prince turned loose all the demons the motes had already taken,” North says. “We had to fight our way through them to reach you.”

Saskia looks around and sees no sign of her. _I might yet have saved her. I will_ not _let anyone else be lost._

The ice cages where Saskia and her kin were imprisoned stand open to the frigid air, and empty. She hears on the wind the voice of the sylph--at least she was freed.

The humans have nearly all fled. Before long, Saskia sees one reason for their fear: the spectral form of a woman she last saw waiting all alone.

She’s not alone now.

“He waited for me,” she tells Saskia, and the young man floating near her, less substantial than she, but still visible, sketches a bow. “On the other side, he waited. Now, we can move on together.”

“I’m so happy for you!” Yumino says.

“So am I,” Saskia says.

“If you seek the prince,” the woman from the Forgotten Castle says, “he ran with the others as soon as the fighting began.”

Saskia huffs. How typical.

“We will find him,” North says.

“What direction did they run?”

The ghostly woman gestures to the east.

“We could still catch them!” Saskia has already begun to walk that direction.

“Perhaps, but we need to know where they’re going.”

Saskia opens her mouth to protest, but realizes something. “There were no water-demons here.” Her exhaustion rushes back over her like a wave. “He must have another stronghold.”

Yumino looks stricken, but she nods. “Keeping snow devils or ice spirits here... It wouldn’t make them miserable enough.”

“We must plan,” North says.

Saskia turns to the woman from the castle and her lover. “He cannot linger much longer, can he?”

“Alas, he cannot.”

“Then, go with him. You’re meant to be together.”

Yumino leans against Saskia, wearing a smile partway to tears.

“It is thanks to you that we _can_ be--all of you. I hope we meet again.” She reaches for her lover, and, as he takes her hand, they fade away.

Yumino wipes her eyes, still smiling, but pulls a face at Saskia’s noticing.

“Don’t be ashamed that you weep easily,” North says.

“He’s right.” Saskia puts an arm about her. “It’s part of what makes you so wonderful.”

Yumino sniffles. “I love you both so much. And... I think I’d like to visit my mother.”

***

North takes them to Merebah, and after many greetings and hugs, Darya, of course, must feed them.

Saskia’s father has settled in--he and Darya have reached an affectionate ease, as if they have been lifelong friends, and they move about with an instinctive comfort and happiness with each other.

After they have wished everyone a good night and gone to their rooms, Saskia takes a third peppered honey pastry. The moment Yumino seemed so far away still weighs on her mind, but she did not wish to disturb either of their parents with the subject.

“The shadow motes are _sad_?” she says. “Are you sure?” She wishes to put the thought of how they felt when they had her in their grasp as far from her mind as she can, but it is too fresh. Their rage, and hers, feel very near indeed.

“They’re lonely,” Yumino says.

“How can they be lonely? They are many.”

Yumino shakes her head. “I don’t know. But that’s what I felt.”

“They wanted to use your anger, Saskia,” North says. “To make you feel that they understood you.”

“It worked.” _They may be sad, but that will win them no mercy from me._

“They were acting according to their nature.”

“So, they want me to feel sorry for them?” Yumino says.

“I cannot be certain, but I don’t think so. I don’t think they meant you to feel their sadness.”

“The loneliness was real, then...”

“But the anger--it was real, too,” Saskia says.

They both look to North, who raises his hands in a gesture of deflection. “The two of you know almost as much about the motes as I do, now. Together, we have discovered things I never imagined.”

“You said they’re drawn to wounds in the world,” Yumino says.

“And that they infect them and spread,” Saskia adds.

“ _And_ that they’re pieces of the first shadow cast in the world.”

“Those things are all true,” North says, “and you needn’t avoid another. I also told you they came into the world when the invaders destroyed my village.”

Saskia moves closer to tuck her arm through his and lean against him. “The memory is so painful--we did not want to bring it up.”

“It is. But we cannot ignore it, and I would not have you pretend it never happened.”

 _Cast out_ , Altia said, what feels like a long time ago. She, too, spoke of loneliness. And their rage within Saskia, melded with hers and burning all the brighter for it... she forces herself to consider it despite her mind’s recoiling from the memory. “Their hurt and mine,” she says. “And our fears. Those were the roots of their anger.”

North nods. “They have ever been thus.”

Yumino is still and quiet, frowning in concentration. “What if we could heal their hurts, and calm their fears?” she says at last.

The silence that falls feels heavy. Saskia’s pulse thuds painfully in her throat. “Is such a thing even possible?”

“I don’t know,” North says.

***

With Yumino sleeping in her childhood bed, Saskia and North share the last room. She fears if she looks too long at him, she could become transfixed and stare. So she steals glances as they ready for sleep--the glints of candlelight that pick out the dark gold in his hair, the curve of his mouth, the dip in his collarbone she wants to kiss again. It is different without Yumino here; North fills up all the space she would in Saskia’s awareness.

She decides finally to take off only her overdress for sleeping, and sheds it. When she turns to face him, their eyes meet, but their gazes skitter away at the same time. North reaches out as if to touch her, then lets his hand fall.

Saskia cannot help but laugh at the both of them, so newly awkward. “I haven’t revoked my permission.”

He gives his amused hum, almost a real laugh this time. “No?”

“Did you think I had?”

He meets her eyes, holds them this time, his a darker grey than usual. “I did not know for certain.”

“We have already made love--you needn’t be shy now!”

Here is another smile she has not seen from him, open and simply happy. She sits beside him and takes his hand.

“It is different, when it is just us.” He lifts her hand and kisses each of her fingertips in turn.

“I know.” She could try to pretend that the danger thrumming in her pulse is more frightening than alluring, but she seems to have lost the ability to lie to herself. _Oh, I would love you forever if I could_.

Like before, he frames her face with both hands, but this time he kisses her eyelids, her cheek, the corner of her mouth. She tips her head, expecting him to kiss her lips, but he does not; he only looks at her.

How could she ever have thought of him as cold? His eyes give everything away, the heat in them waking an echo in her, and a kind of softness to his expression making her chest ache in a way no less worrying for being familiar by now.

 _I am afraid I look at him the same way_ , she thinks, for she can feel her mouth curve into a smile born of the same tenderness. “Oh, I want to learn every inch of you,” she whispers. Joining with him before was only a taste, and she craves so much more of him now--starting with taking her time to savor his reactions to her touch, for she has learned to read him well enough that she misses very little of the shadings of emotion in his face now.

“Saskia,” he says, very softly, “I am yours.”

 _You may do as you wish with me_ , he told her and Yumino, and this time she takes him at his word, though she cannot let it pass with no comment at all. “ _Are_ you? You don’t know what I will do.”

“It does not matter.”

He says it so easily.

She brushes a wayward curl back from his forehead, skims her fingertips down over his cheek, along the line of his jaw, watching the way he closes his eyes.

 _He is overwhelmed_ , she thinks. _That is why he hides_. It only makes her want to pull him even closer.

“I wish... to see all of you again.”

“Mm, and so you shall.”

***

After they have loved, and dozed a little, and the fire is low and the room chillier, making the warm bed feel even better, North stirs.

“This is not who I am,” he says slowly. “I have never allowed emotion to cloud my thoughts... yet it seems I cannot help it with you, or with Yumino. I do not know how you two slipped past my every defense, for I will not pretend they were anything other than very old and very strong.”

“North, you don’t have to--”

“I want you to know.” He props himself on his elbow and looks down at her; clothed only in his hair, tumbled about him and tangled from her fingers, he is more beautiful than ever. “I have loved you ever since you pointed your dagger at me and were not afraid.”

“Oh--” It comes out as a gasp, more dismayed than she likes. _I cannot bear to hurt him, but..._ “I _cannot_ love you.”

“I do not need you to. No matter--” He cuts himself off, and she thinks this might be the first time she has ever seen him falter in speaking. “I do not need you to.”

She ought to regain some distance, not erase it, but she cannot fight the need to be close to him any more than she can with Yumino, and she embraces him, her face against his neck.

“That’s why we are linked,” he says.

“And Yumino loves both of us.”

“Yes.”

 _The bonds of fate knew it before I did… How many times have we said that the link goes both ways? I wouldn’t be able to send him_ _help myself unless…_ Her eyes widen.

How it happened, she does not know--nor does she know how her fear has lifted like so much morning fog, save that North can be both the storm about her and the calm at its center. It is that calm she leans against now, a safe harbor, finally, after her soul’s long journeying, and though Yumino is not here, she feels her, too.

“I’ve told you a little of my mother. But not of her warning.” So she tells him of their only meeting and the prophecy, her beautiful face, her mad eyes, voice growing shakier and more hesitant with every word, but it seems she can draw strength from him even without him sending it to her in battle, for when she looks into his eyes, she feels braver.

“North... I do _not_ think you will be the death of me. And Yumino never could be.”

He holds her more tightly, buries his face in her hair. “Little flame, I won’t be. I promise you that.”


	13. Chapter 13

In the morning, Saskia goes to find Yumino. Darkness has begun to stretch forth its fingers to cover even this land. Shadows cast by nothing in this world move over the dunes near the harbor. Saskia does not want to become accustomed to such sights, but it pains her to look on them for too long, too.

Yumino has wandered a long way down the beach, but slowly enough, sweeping over the shallow water with a bare foot and peering into the wet sand, that Saskia easily catches her up.

“My mother was wrong.” That is enough to put a delighted smile on Yumino’s face, and Saskia wishes she could say those last words, but she falters.

Yumino hugs her, and gives her a quick kiss on the nose. “I knew she was.”

She has one hand folded about something. “What is that?”

Yumino opens her hand to show the shells she has collected, swirled yellow and pink, black that shimmers with iridescence. “For North’s hair, I thought.”

“I have been doing the same!” Saskia grins. “I have a jewel one of the cat spirits shed in Tankyra, and a piece of quartz I found on the hospital grounds. I have been waiting for the right moment to give them to him.”

“Yahani Netha gave me a charm I saved, too.”

“You began so long ago?”

Yumino ducks her head, smiling. “I already knew I wanted to stay with you both.”

“So quickly?”

“Yes.” Her tone becomes less teasing. “You needed me, but I needed you, too.” She looks out to sea. “I don’t care anymore about making my father sorry he left. I know we’re doing something important--something the world needs.”

Saskia slips her arms about Yumino and rests her chin on her shoulder so she can watch the waves with her. “It is his loss not to know you, little flower. You’re one of the lights that shine brightest in this world.”

“So are you! And...” She hesitates. Saskia feels the soft huff as she breathes out. “More than all that... you remember what the motes said, outside Way-Station?”

Saskia nods.

“They weren’t wrong. I _was_ running away. But with you and North, I don’t need to anymore. You’re my home.”

“And you’re mine,” Saskia whispers, and kisses her.

Back at Darya’s house, they give North their collected treasures. He holds the little colorful jumble to his heart without speaking.

***

Saskia hates doing nothing, knowing the prince hides in his secret stronghold and is surely, even now, torturing more demons and spirits. Even worse, she hears reports of the imperatrix’s failing health. It must be bad indeed if she can no longer conceal her decline.

Even being able to spend time with her father, and seeing him free and happy, does not help her impatience, for if Ivadomir has his way, all the world will be threatened.

But there is no place in the world he could be...

“I have been thinking about the water-demons,” Saskia says, the next morning. They are a piece of the puzzle she cannot account for.

Such thoughts are not pleasant--lying here in the warm bed with North--and with Yumino who has sneaked in to join them, saying it’s more fun if it’s secret--she could easily be tempted to far pleasanter. But one thing has been nagging at the back of her mind: that Frondel said he could not trace where his kin went.

“What is it?” Yumino clearly has less worrisome things on her mind, too, but she stops playing with Saskia’s hair.

“Frondel said they were taken beyond his reach. If they are beyond his knowing, they must not be in Kallekot anymore.” Even the deep crater lake in the south, Chelashen, though fed by no streams, is known to the water-demons, who consider it as much their domain as all other fresh water. “But even outside my country, all is connected, from the smallest stream to the broadest river. So where could they be?”

She watches North’s face go blank bit by bit as she speaks, as if all expression drains from it. He has not hidden his feelings thus for a long time, and her heart sinks as she realizes what it means, and what he must say.

“There is one place. But it is not easily reached. My country.”

“He would not dare,” Saskia says. Yet North could not be wrong--not about this.

“The prince has already done a lot of things we thought he wouldn’t dare,” Yumino says.

“I know.” Saskia is as affronted on North’s behalf as she was for her own kind when Jashree first told her of the capture of her cousins. Yumino will know how best to comfort him, but Saskia can only share his anger, hers brighter than the banked fire of his--all the more dangerous for how slowly he is ever stirred to wrath; it will not flare and burn itself out as hers so often does.

“It must be the answer. I have no sense of where the shadow motes he’s creating could be.”

“You don’t feel called anywhere?” Yumino asks.

North shakes his head. “Nothing. Through his evil, Prince Ivadomir has created a pathway for the motes into this world. Why should they spread through other means, when this gate stands wide open for them?”

 _Never has he called the shadow motes evil_ , Saskia thinks. _But he doesn’t hesitate to name the prince thus. And he’s right to do it._ “So _all_ of them...” She speaks haltingly, for this is worse than she imagined.

“Are wherever he is,” North finishes when she trails off.

“So much pain in one place,” Yumino murmurs, and Saskia pulls her closer.

“I have not returned since... since forging my sword.” North has mastered himself enough that his voice betrays little of his mood. “I am not sure even I could reach it now.”

Yumino takes his hand. “Why not?”

“Such magic as protects it goes wild if left alone. It can become very dark. And because of that, I fear the prince can now reach it more easily than we can.”

Saskia does not say that they must try. All three of them know it.

“Will you be all right, North?” Yumino says.

“Yes. I have to be.”

***

The fog at the top of the world reeks of choking smoke and rot, and green things left to ripen for too long. North has brought them to the border of his country, but he cannot cross it, with or without Saskia and Yumino.

What trees and bushes they can see are twisted and stunted, as if in pain. One tree, bent nearly double, bears fruit a sickly purple, with a sheen to it like oil on water. Where the fruit has fallen, it has split open, and a thick, cloying scent rises from it, a sickening mixture of citrus and spoiled meat.

“We will find no shortcut,” North says.

“Then we’d better keep moving,” Yumino says.

With North leading the way, hands linked, for in the thickest of the fog everything turns blurred and indistinct, they go on, trying to find a way deeper in. Yet the fog keeps turning them about and forcing them back to the border.

“We’ve passed this tree before,” Saskia says. It is impossible to mistake, its topmost branches curled like fingers clenched into a fist.

“I want to try something.” Yumino takes some herbs from her medicine bag and flings them at the trunk of the tree.

They strike it with a flash of blue flame, and leave scars upon the bark.

“Mugwort and salt,” Yumino says, pleased. “And Yahani Netha’s healing blend of herbs. What if I throw it in front of us to clear a way?”

“That’s a very good idea,” North says.

When Yumino tosses the herbs before them, the fog parts enough for North to see how they should go, and he finally begins to lead them past where they have been before.

It seems they walk for hours. The fog burns away--or gives up; Saskia cannot help but ascribe a will, and malice, to it--revealing a wasteland.

“Hold a moment,” North says. “Do you hear it?”

Once, long ago, as she traveled through a pass high in the Narwes, an avalanche narrowly missed Saskia’s coach, obliterating the road not far ahead. The long rumbling roar she hears now is like that, but slower and deeper. The ground trembles.

“What _is_ that?” Yumino says.

It is never good when North looks resigned. “The mountains are moving.”

Saskia stares at him. “Can shadow motes _do_ that?”

“If their numbers are great enough, and they have been infecting a place long enough... I have never seen it, but they could.”

“It’s to keep us out, isn’t it?” Yumino says, and North nods.

“They move to block our path.”

The low thunder grows louder, and they see, now, a gap in the mountains closing, sealing off the land beyond.

“There must be a way,” Yumino says. “If Ivadomir can get in, we can.”

“Saskia,” North says. “Give me your dagger, please.”

“Why...” It is a suspicion, not a question.

“It is the only way.”

She meets those grave grey eyes. She knows he’s right. She hands it over.

“Hold onto me.”

He draws the blade along the inside of his right arm, hissing at its touch. Blood wells up darkly, and he turns his arm to let it spill onto the blighted ground.

“Mine, too,” Saskia says.

“No, you needn’t--”

“Adding demon blood cannot hurt.”

She makes the cut on her wrist, two small lines in an X, and lets her blood drip where North’s fell.

The sounds of shifting rock subside with a distant grinding, and, like the shift of an optical illusion, a path comes into view before them, winding into the pass that was closed to them not a moment ago.

Only those who know North as well as Saskia and Yumino do would know he pauses before stepping onto the track to gather his strength and will for what is to come.

***

There can be no doubt that the prince truly hides here. The landscape is bereft of color, and fragmented, pieces of trees, of rocks, even of the ground, simply gone with no sense or pattern, leaving jagged edges and impossible shapes. One outcropping of rock rises and abruptly cuts off into nothingness, then continues above the void.

Saskia thinks she was not far wrong in thinking there was some malice--or at least caprice--to the shifting landscape, for when she looks to North, she can see he knows exactly where they have emerged. But his expression is not the careful blankness she might once have expected, nor the sorrow she feared. He wears a calm, small smile, though there is something of pain in it.

“All right?” Yumino murmurs, and he nods.

“We will heal this land.”

Soon they come to an open space where the decay is less, though its scent still lingers on the breeze out of the east. Here is something of the lost beauty of this country, jewel-like in its sharp clarity, in the brightness of sky and greenery, colors so pure they seem almost to burn.

At the edge of the clearing stands a pile of rocks, covered in moss and so weathered they look as if they would be soft to the touch.

They were not placed at random.

Saskia glances back at North, and she understands.

“Here?” Yumino says, and he nods. She reaches out to him, but lets her hand fall when he goes forward as if pulled and powerless to resist it.

“I thought I would never return to this place.”

“Do you want to leave here?” Saskia says.

“No.”

Save for the wind through the grasses, it is nearly silent, but the quiet is not peaceful. There is something tense and watchful about it. North walks to the rocks, still moving slowly, almost dreamily. He puts a hand lightly on the stone. “The meeting-hall.”

He continues around the clearing, touching what ruins remain, stopping in some places where nothing is left at all, naming each of the buildings, or those who lived within. Finally, he stands before a cairn. It has not crumbled or decayed.

“I raised this. Before I left. It is not enough, but alone, I could do no more.”

Saskia goes to him now. Yumino walks along the path North took, gathering flowers.

“It feels right that I see it again, though...” He looks toward the woods, eyes narrowed. Then he makes a low, angry noise, almost a growl. Saskia looks at him in alarm.

“There.” He points.

His eyes are sharp indeed, for Saskia can barely make out the building among the trees.

“The prince should _not_ have built within the very sight of this place. That he did is no coincidence.”

Yumino brings an armful of flowers over and lays them at the base of the cairn. “He’s not just evil. He’s petty and disrespectful, too.”

“He’ll be sorry,” Saskia vows, not with the greedy rage of the shadow motes, though she still feels as if that could come surging back. No, this is a quieter anger, for she can feel how deeply the desecration of his homeland wounds North. To her, too, there is something sacred about this land, where the gods and goddesses are said once to have walked. A glance at Yumino tells Saskia she feels the same.

“Let’s get him,” Yumino says.

North gestures toward the wooden building. “They will see us coming.”

“Unless,” Saskia says, picking up on his thought.

His mouth quirks, and he holds out his hands.

Saskia stumbles from the reeling momentum of stepping between worlds.

And feels at once a jerk as she’s pulled back, and the burn of iron held to her throat.

_No! Not again!_

Two more of the prince’s men hold Yumino. No one has seized North, but this must be by design, for the prince stands facing him several steps away.

Shadow motes coat the rough-hewn boards of the walls and floor, so thick that Saskia at first takes them for mold, or spilled oil. Even as she watches, they spread, and she cannot keep herself from trying to retreat. If they touch her again...

But even in her distress, she is proud to see that Yumino does not wince away, and that North pays them no heed at all, focusing on Ivadomir.

She realizes what the soldier holds against her neck is a rough iron file--they had not planned so far in advance as to have a weapon ready, then. The thought gives her less comfort than she would like.

“Stop this while you still can,” she says. “Haven’t you seen what it’s doing to our country? To this one?”

The prince sneers. “How can one such as you still be so naïve? You can accept the darkness in the world, or you can be destroyed by it. I choose to accept it, and master it.”

“No. Those aren’t the only choices,” Yumino says. “You can fight it.”

“You’re a stupid child, and worse than the fire witch.”

“Do not,” North says, with a chilly calm that sounds almost pleasant, “call them that.”

“I am the prince of Kallekot, and I will do as I please.”

“But you’re not the _heir_ ,” Saskia says.

“I will rule soon enough. You’ll all help me, though you won’t live to see it.” He goes closer to North, though he will not venture within reach of his sword. “The fire witch was no fun at all before. But then, we’d barely even started with her. This is even better--now you can watch us break her, and the human.”

 _Oh, North, do not let him provoke you_ , Saskia thinks, and he tenses, but holds back from attacking.

“You meddle in things you do not understand,” he says. “No one may command shadow motes.”

“That’s a strange thing for the one who kills them to say.”

The motes hiss all around them.

“I neither kill nor command them.”

“Enough of this. Kill the human.”

“No!” North is in motion even as he shouts his denial.

Saskia feels Yumino reaching for her, and reaches desperately back.

And connects.

The iron against her neck burns even hotter, but Yumino’s strength helps her through the pain, and she throws her captors from her with a blaze of fire, and runs for Yumino.

North has already slipped through the space between the worlds to her side. He grabs both their hands and pulls them to the far corner of the room, where the motes are fewest.

The prince makes a scoffing noise. “I thought you’d be stronger than the rest, but you’re just like them: afraid to claim the power in the world for yourself. Infecting you will make up for all the trouble you’ve caused me.”

“It won’t,” North says. “It is impossible.”

He lifts his sword, and the motes ebb and swirl about his feet, but they do not touch him.

The prince conceals his fear as quickly as it flares in his eyes, but Saskia sees it and smiles.

The prince’s men see it, too. They have been edging toward the door ever since North pulled Yumino and Saskia away. Ivadomir’s wavering clearly convinces them they want no part of this fight, and they go.

“Cowards!” the prince shouts after them. “You’re _nothing_!”

And he charges North.

The prince is trained in sword-fighting, of course, and he is very good... but he does not have centuries of practice. North backs him into a corner and disarms him almost at once.

“You’ve lost. Free your captives.”

“Oh, I’ll do that, but I haven’t lost.” Heedless of the motes, he presses a catch that opens a secret door, and bolts into the yard it opens onto.

North is right behind him, and Saskia and Yumino on North’s heels.

More iron cages here, stretching as far as Saskia can see, towers and mazes of them, every one roiling with shadow thick as fog that obscures anyone--or anything--still left inside.

Ivadomir opens cages as he goes, coming at last to a shallow pool where listless water-demons lie.

North pauses. “Saskia, have you the strength?”

“Yes. He’s yours.”

Yumino takes her hand, and they enter the first cage.

“I can help you,” Saskia tells the dryad she finds crouching there.

North makes his way down the aisle between the rows of cages slowly, fighting only when he must to defend himself. Many of the demons, too weak to attack, do not even rise to leave their cages.

Where Ivadomir awaits him, the shadow motes are a black blizzard in the air. Even the sky has gone dark.

“Come away from there,” North says. “You can still stop this.”

“Stop it? Why would I do that? I will rule, or the world will fall with me. This shadow is _mine_.” The motes cluster about him, clinging to him.

North keeps very still, waiting.

Saskia has freed the demons she can, with Yumino’s help--few enough, for most of the cages are empty. Those who were beyond heeding her voice dissolved into shadow motes when she tried to reach them.

She and Yumino hurry to North... only to see he doesn’t need them to face the prince. The motes are taking Ivadomir--his pale hair is already streaked with shadow.

Saskia lifts her chin. And holds her hand out to him.

“Come back to the light.”

“I’ll never accept your help, fire witch.”

Almost as if they waited for those words, the motes close in around him.

North touches Saskia’s arm, and when she looks at him, he shakes his head. “He’s beyond your help. But that you should try, even after everything... little flame, you amaze me.”

“I didn’t want to,” she grumbles.

“No. But you would have.”

The motes part, and the prince is gone.

North steps into the space where he was, and the real battle begins.

He is a blur of motion and fatal grace, and Saskia pulls Yumino back and out of the way. “The sword’s only a tool. We can still help him, like you did with me before.”

“Yes.” Yumino takes her hand.

Together, they reach out. Saskia sees the circle that links the three of them together, so vivid it almost seems to be visible in the human world.

She’s already drained from freeing the demons, and so is Yumino, but they must hold on, for North’s sake. The motes are so many, she cannot even see the brightness of the sword’s edge.

They are too many, strengthened by all the demons who once suffered in all the empty cages, and all the motes flocking to the gap the prince gouged open between the worlds.

North fights on without flagging, but they can both feel what it is costing him. The circle in Saskia’s mind’s eye dims, and she must admit what she has feared.

They are losing.

Yumino sways on her feet, and Saskia steadies her, with a little cry of dismay.

In a rush of air, North is beside them. And Saskia sees in his eyes something that almost stops her heart.

In the grey, a flicker of shadow.

“Get out of here,” he says.

“No!”

“We’re not leaving you,” Yumino says.

“I can--” He hauls in a difficult breath. “There is another way, but you must go.”

“No!” Saskia and Yumino say together.

The motes laugh, the howl of wind through rotted branches, the whine of thwarted hate... the keening of sorrow. “Now you’ll all know how we feel... Never love, always lost, never home--”

Yumino stands straight, and steps toward them. “I will love you.”

“Yumino, no!” North says. “Do not open yourself to them. It’s too much for a human to endure.”

It’s by the unnatural glitter in his eyes that Saskia understands. “Yumino, don’t!”

Her smile is radiant and heartbreakingly gentle. “Oh, North. I understand everything. You did very well, but I’m the only one who can take them the rest of the way. They’re very tired, too. I have to do this. I _want_ to. But I need both of you.”

 _I can’t_ , Saskia thinks, but she cannot deny her, either, and she takes the hand Yumino holds out, and feels it when North completes the circle by taking her other.

The motes rage about them, trying to break them apart. But this is the battle the three of them have been preparing for all along, before they even knew they would face it together.

Their circle holds.

“I love you both so much.” There is a glow about Yumino, coming clearer now. “Tell my mother, too.”

The blankness of North’s face is not calm, but a determination to hide his sorrow, that it might not be the last thing Yumino sees. Saskia lifts her head. _I do not want my tears to be the last thing she sees, either._

The motes buffet them, lifting Yumino off the ground, stirring her hair and skirts.

 _Like a little flower_ , Saskia thinks, and knows she is weeping after all.

The shadow still fights. Saskia can feel it straining against the three of them, cringing away from the light.

But more than that, stronger than that, she feels Yumino’s determination, her fearless, generous heart, and in answer to it, there can be no stinting, not now--she will have no other chance to give all her strength, all she is, to Yumino. _I love you, too_ , she thinks, and knows Yumino hears it.

She reaches for the brightness of Yumino’s laughter, for the spark in North’s eyes when he teases them... for all the warmth and love they have created together, and she sends it forth, to Yumino, to North, to the shadow motes and the long-endured ache of their loneliness.

“Let me take you home,” Yumino says. “I’ll go with you, so you don’t get lost. Don’t be afraid anymore.”

She meets Saskia’s eyes and North’s in turn, and bows her head. _It’s all right_. Saskia understands her meaning as clearly as if she said it aloud.

She lets go of their hands.

The swirls of shadow dance about her, graceful in a way they have never before been. Gold begins to suffuse them--only wisps at first, but it spreads in sweeping arabesques until the glow is all but blinding.

Each of the motes is now a small shimmering thing, and they seem insubstantial, weightless... and fragile. They look as if they might break apart and be seized by the wind and left stranded and lost.

But then they draw back together, and though Yumino has vanished, Saskia feels her spirit reach out one more time, in farewell to her and North, and to gather the motes to her and help them find their way.

North puts an arm around Saskia’s shoulders, and together they watch the transformed motes rise into the sky. And there, with a last lovely spiral outward, they become part of the bright scatter of stars.


	14. Chapter 14

They sleep in the ruins of the meeting-hall. Saskia opens her eyes in the middle of the night, not knowing what woke her. North pulls her even closer and buries his face against her neck, and they make love in breathless silence. She just as silently promises never to tell him how badly he’s shaking.

“I thought I should never be more than a useful monster,” she says, in the quiet after.

“Saskia,” he murmurs.

“No, let me finish. I didn’t think I _could_ be more. Not until I met you and Yumino.”

"You saved me, both of you” he says. “When we met, I was losing my strength. Every battle was harder, and it took me longer to recover each time. That all changed when you started helping me."

"Oh, North. You saved me, too."

He drops a kiss onto her hair. "I may like the way you just said it best of all."

Morning brings a day gray and silent, as if the whole world mourns with them.

North packs away his bedroll and gets to his feet slowly. Saskia follows him outside, where he stands simply watching the sky.

“We must tell Darya, but... not yet.”

North bows his head. He was not wounded in the battle, but Saskia can feel the deep weariness and sorrow in him, like her own, and she is not certain they will ever fade.

“I am tired, little flame. Tired to my very bones. And I cannot let the last of the motes stay in this world.”

“The last--?” She is baffled.

But only for a moment.

In a torrent of memories, it all comes clear--seawater tracing bruises on his skin. The scars on his back, symbols of protection the motes could not bear, burned away. Shadow swirling about his feet, his taunt in Essalia to draw them out. The darkness in his eyes when all seemed lost. “Oh, my dearest...”

He takes her hand. “When my village was attacked, I saw them take over the spirits of those who had fallen and could not rest in their graves. I saw them begin to anchor themselves here, in my home, and grow stronger.

“And I saw that I was a prize they would not be able to resist.”

“North...”

“But I was too slow, and by then they were too many for me to contain.”

 _They fill the empty spaces of the world... hearts hollowed by grief_ , he said, and she never guessed he was talking about his own heart. “They weren’t your burden to bear.”

“If not mine, then whose? It’s as I told you. There was no other.”

To be filled thus by darkness and rise above it, to take it into himself and rise, indeed, to the greatest compassion she has ever known of, but did not understand until now... she is awed and humbled.

“But can I not--”

“It is far too late for your gift to help me.”

“Don’t leave me.”

He cups her cheek, brushes the tears away. “My Saskia, I must.”

“I don’t want to face the years to come without you.” _First Yumino, and now North? It will break my heart._

“You’re strong.”

“I don’t _want_ to be!”

“I’m almost two thousand years old.”

She hadn’t thought he remembered, but more than ever, she can see it in his eyes, and she sees, too, his weariness, and his love. _Oh, North._ “And you want to rest,” she says, knowing he will not voice it, and it tears at her to do so, but what hurts even more is knowing he faced so many years alone. “I cannot deny you that.”

He bows his head again.

She must say it now or risk never having another chance, and it is not, after all, so difficult. “I love you. And all this time I couldn’t tell you. I wish I had said it every day since first I knew it.”

He kisses her, gently. “No one could have loved me better than you and Yumino.”

She looks around the village, and knows what she must do. “Which was yours?”

“Can you bear it, my Saskia?”

“No. But for you, I will.”

He leads her away from the main cluster of buildings, to a few stones that mark out a small space. He _is_ very tired; she sees it in his every motion. She helps him to sit down on the soft grasses that carpet what was once his house.

“Thank you,” he says softly. “For bringing me home at last.”

She pulls him close one last time, breathes in the smoky scent of his hair, making no attempt to hide her tears. “I love you so very dearly.”

“Enough to let me go,” North whispers. “And I love you, little flame. I’ll love you forever.”

She closes her eyes and simply holds him for a long time. He leans against her heavily at first, but then grows lighter and lighter.

She opens her eyes in time to see his peaceful smile as he fades away in a soft glow.

***

In the mountains at the top of the world, a goddess and a god walk.

“It hardly seems fair they should be parted,” the goddess says, “after all they have been through to save this world.”

“Sister,” says the Sun Lord, “you have always been too tender-hearted where humans are concerned.”

“But two of them are _not_ human.”

Saskia lingers in the ruins. She cannot bring herself to leave yet. She knows not how long she has been here, but she finds what is left of North’s village strangely comforting, and the colors of the sky and forest and stones are so lovely, now they are fully restored, that they can hold her attention for hours with their subtle play in the shifting light, and that is oddly soothing, too. She watches the wind silver the leaves when rain approaches, or the clouds chase each other across the moon. If she stays long enough, the beauty might bring her back to herself, but she knows it will take a very long time.

One morning she hears the rustle of someone approaching through the tall grasses, here where none can come, and goes to see who it is.

Only to find herself speechless at first at the sight of the woman before her.

“My lady...?” She is not certain how one such as herself should address a goddess.

And this is certainly a goddess, with her hair even longer than North’s, white though her face is young, and her beautiful robes in silver and blue and grey—and most of all her smile, as if Saskia is only a child, but one she loves very much. A gentle radiance moves with her, and Saskia knows who she is.

“Saskia,” she says. “Walk with me, dear one.”

Saskia does, going with her around the edge of the ruins. “May I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Was it all worth it? Did we drive the darkness back for good?”

The goddess bows her head. “The shadow motes are gone from this world, and they were not destroyed but changed. Through Yumino, with your help and North’s, they found their way to the light.

“There is no surety that the world will not be threatened again, but that does not mean it was not worth it. As you well know, there is no bright thing without a shadow. If there is need, one will be called. North carried his burden so well and for so long, we could ask no more of him, just as you could not.”

“But if the darkness can come again,” Saskia says, despair all but choking her. “What was it all for?”

“Nothing done in courage and love is ever in vain, daughter.” Her voice is soft as moonlight seen through gauze, silvery as the stars. The last word strikes something within Saskia that chimes sweetly, and she begins to dare to hope.

“You three healed a great hurt,” the goddess goes on, “one that went beyond just your world. North was right when he said the shadow motes were outside our powers. And for all you have done, I have come to give you a choice. You may live out the years that have been given you, or you may become mortal and move on, where you will surely meet North again.”

The hope that was only a wish a moment ago lifts Saskia’s heart, opening outward like wings... or a flower. “And Yumino?”

“Yumino too.”

“You already know my decision.” Saskia does not know if she will weep or laugh, and finds herself doing both. “My mother was right, after all. It _is_ for love that I leave this life.”

“And for love,” the Moon Maiden says, holding out her hand, “they’ll be waiting for you.”

THE END


End file.
